<p>Schmaltz…There is no panick here just amazement that something as stupid as this list could actually be published. My attitude has nothing to do with where any of my kids attend or have attended school it is just a matter of common sense. </p>
<p>I agree that the best school is the school that is right for your child but that is not what this ranking is about. It is a “BEST” ranking and the how they came up with this is nothing short of an embarrassment to Forbes.</p>
<p>I wasn’t looking for bp’s in heaven, bbd–with my eldest son it’s just what I did. I guess I wasn’t that tuned in to the USNews rankings way back then. Unfortunately, his overall grades were not of the quality that could have gotten him into a school even listed in the Princeton Review or Fiske guide! It did help, you are right, that he knew his intended field of study. However, most kids have a general idea as to that, along with a general idea as to field of study (science? humanities?) and a general geographic location. So we turned to the fat guidebooks. He did end up transferring into a better “ranked” school–simply because the school he was at did not go far enough in his major. The middle one’s schools of interest were included in some guides and not in others. The youngest will be starting at a top ten I guess (ok, I would have to look up the exact rank–5th maybe?) school. For him I did not use the fat book because he was looking for a more competitive school. I used PR and Fiske; the College Board’s “How Do I Stack Up” feature was particularly helpful.</p>
<p>Isn’t Who’s Who basically a vanity publication these days?</p>
<p>"However, most kids have a general idea as to that, along with a general idea as to field of study (science? humanities?) and a general geographic location. "</p>
<p>our kid wanted engineering, maybe Arch , and liberal arts (as in social science and humanities) But any school with engineering, or with an arch studies major, was ruled in, esp if it was strong in liberal arts. Basically we could rule out the pure LACs, but that was it (and of course lots of LACS have 3+2 engineering, but we decided to rule those out) </p>
<p>And general geographic location - we are east coast, but she ended up applying to WUSTL and Tulane. We thought long and hard about U Chicago. We even thought about Calif schools. </p>
<p>Basically those didnt help.</p>
<p>I am not saying YOU should have used USNWR. I am saying for US it was handy.</p>
<p>BrooklynBornDad, it is not like we were trying to purposely avoid USNews rankings. We just were not even aware of them when our kids applied to college (though for D2, it is quite irrelevant as she was applying to BFA programs and regular college rankings truly would not be relevant anyway). It is only on CC that I have observed a big obsession with the rankings but that is not the case in our community. We just bought guidebooks in the book store and used colleges’ sites. </p>
<p>I now do subscribe to the USNews college edition for my job as it is a quick way to get data on various colleges. But I truly don’t deal with rankings in my work with students. </p>
<p>It is kind of funny to me that I am participating on a rankings discussion thread in the first place. I opened this thread and went to the link and people were intiially discussing the methodology and so I did find it all sort of amusing. I just never would have thought a ranking would be based on the things Forbes used. But where a school ranks is not important to me. It is really about finding the best college for oneself. Forbes calls this ranking “best colleges” but it is unfortunate that many will see it that way without even knowing what criteria was used, and will put a lot of stock in it, if they are into rankings, that is. The kids I know who go to highly selective colleges tend not to give two hoots about Who’s Who, for example.</p>
<p>"the College Board’s “How Do I Stack Up” feature was particularly helpful. "</p>
<p>that uses SATs and class rank, right? </p>
<p>DD went to TJ. Class rank was useless for us, and GPA only slightly less so. Most conventional “chance” indicators would have said she would have done less well in her apps than she did do. TJs own destinations indicators would have been useful, except too few kids applied to the USNWR 30 - 60 privates (see how handy that nomenclature is?) most TJs went to schools in the top 30, or to Va instate publics. But once we had a good sense for where DD fit in terms of a couple of schools, we could use USNWR to estimate her odds (without having to cobble together our own blend of SAT, Rank, and “how do they adjust for TJ”</p>
<p>As it turns out of the 6 schools i thought were matches using that approach, she got accepted to 3, WLed to 2, and rejected by Tulane (Nyaah!) So I think we were spot on in identifying where she could get in. I thank USNWR for assisting in our process. </p>
<p>and no, I dont care where duke is ranked relative to the ivies. Thats not where USNWR is useful.</p>
<p>I don’t know what TJ is, bbd.</p>
<p>“BrooklynBornDad, it is not like we were trying to purposely avoid USNews rankings.”</p>
<p>Yes. I need a stronger smilie. I got that.</p>
<p>If there are folks here who (mistakenly) worship the USNWR rankings, there are also folks here who have a grudge against it, who while they may not want to ban it, put USNWR in the same category as purveyors of professional wrestling and fashion advertisers who encourage anorexia. We USED USNWR and are not ashamed we did, and it didnt make us snobs.</p>
<p>TJ </p>
<p>Thomas Jeffeson High School for Science and Technology.</p>
<p>The magnet in Northern Virginia.</p>
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</p>
<p>Um, yes. Every year or so I get a letter from them “congratulating” me on being “nominated” and going on about how prestigious the danged thing is, and then towards the end, when they think they’ve got me suckered in, they drop the hammer: for a “small fee” I can be listed and have my accomplishments “recognized.” Yeah, right. Just like those People to People letters my daughter gets “congratulating” her on being “nominated” for this “highly selective and prestigious” program, and it turns out it’s just a high-priced travel service arranging expensive group trips for a self-selecting group of teens gullible enough think it means something and wealthy enough to take the bait. Letters from Who’s Who and People to People go straight to the recycling bin in our household. So should the Forbes ranking.</p>
<p>That’s the thing…with some of these colleges that are not too selective, perhaps their students think well of Who’s Who and are eager to be in it and at very selective colleges, the students would not be inclined to pay the fee and realize it is not that much of an honor. So, I can see why some unknown and not too selective colleges would get a boost in this ranking if percentage of graduates in Who’s Who is a criteria!</p>
<p>Likewise, many elite college have internal faculty evaluations and their students may not be inclined to participate on those professor ratings online sites.</p>
<p>“We didn’t have that in our house.”</p>
<p>While Sooz is tidying up her 13-year-old son’s bedroom, she catches a glimpse of some papers sticking out beneath the mattress. Upon further inspection, she discovers a recent copy of “High Times,” as well as a dogeared book called “Columbine: How They Did It.”</p>
<p>“Whew,” she says, “thank God there was no USNews college guide.”</p>
<p>Schmaltz, it is not as if I am against owning USNews college issue! You keep reading into things and making inferences that are not true. It is just that we never had any interest in it and didn’t own it and never paid attention to rankings. I only learned about the emphasis on rankings when I read CC! I’m not against the issue or people using it. Just was not on our radar. Back when my kids applied to college, it is not like we heard of it and said, “no way are we buying that.” We just were not very aware of it and even once I learned of it on CC, it didn’t really pique my interest. One of my kids was the only kid in the whole high school to go to an Ivy League college. It is not that common here. One of my kids applied to BFA in musical theater programs and was the only kid at her high school to do so that year and these programs would not be on anyone’s radar (let alone rankings on USNews are irrelevant for these competitive programs).</p>
<p>As I said, I am currently a subscriber to the premium online edition for use for my job as a one stop site with lots of data on each college. </p>
<p>It is not as if I am anti people reading that magazine. </p>
<p>I personally am not into rankings, and just do not tune into them. I read many posts on CC with things like “T20” etc. and these are not topics (or abbreviations) that ever arose in our home or community. In fact, acronyms like HYPSM were foreign to me until I came upon CC. You may find that hard to believe, but every community is different. We do not live in a competitive community. Nobody discussed their SAT scores or class rank or where they were applying to college and surely the concept of rankings was never mentioned at our high school.</p>
<p>If people are into rankings or using this magazine, I don’t have a problem with it. We just never were aware of it or used it ourselves and rankings just were not of interest to my kids or us either. It is not like we purposely avoided it. We just never were too aware of it. Just was not on our radar. I learned about it on CC and it still just did not interest me much. It is not like I’m against it, however. If my kids knew about it and wanted to buy a copy, fine by me! But they never knew about it or asked about it.</p>
<p>Isn’t Who’s Who basically a vanity publication these days?
Um, yes. Every year or so I get a letter from them “congratulating” me on being “nominated” and going on about how prestigious the danged thing is, and then towards the end, when they think they’ve got me suckered in, they drop the hammer: for a “small fee” I can be listed and have my accomplishments “recognized.” </p>
<p>Ditto with Who’s Who in Pedicuring.</p>
<p>I agree that it’s silly, but it doesn’t cost money to be listed in Who’s Who. It just costs money to own your own copy, which I have never spent.</p>
<p>Yes, a vanity exercise but not as blatant as you suggest.</p>
<p>Metaphysically speaking, it is impossible to construct a methodology that will accurate list the “best” clleges in American from No.1 to X. However, that does not mean that these lists cannot have any value to some.</p>
<p>Personally, I think it is a waste of time to expend time and energy comparing the methods. One can peruse the lists to get ideas on how to begin to construct a list – kind of a jumping off point.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, each student has to know enough about him/herself to identify his/her unique priorities. No cluster of statistitions and editors can ever do that for YOU.</p>
<p>glido, I agree with all you wrote. </p>
<p>Still, if a magazine is going to attempt to create such a list, there are ways they can gather data if their objective was student satisfaction and opinions. They did not actually conduct a study of any type. They could use questionnaires even. But if they rely on websites like ratemyprofessors, they are just dealing with whomever chooses to participate there. If they use Who’s Who, they eliminate kids at colleges who don’t bother with Who’s Who but have significant other honors. If they are looking at salaries (though frankly, I would not examine salaries but would examine employment), they would go beyond salaries of graduates in the corporate business world as many colleges have students who go into fields that would never show up there. Collecting data for comparison purposes can be a good thing. But the Forbes thing did not involve collection of data but just used existing information from very weird sources that just don’t hold a lot of meaning or significance, in my view. Seems odd to me. </p>
<p>But it doesn’t truly matter because I think a kid should not start with rankings but start with directories and their personal search criteria and find schools that meet that criteria that would be best for them, not “best schools.”</p>
<p>
I don’t remember Who’s Who asked for a fee. I think that the listing is free, but they want to sell you stuff to commemorate “you achievement”.
That is not to say the use of Who’s Who as a criterion is appropriate.</p>
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</p>
<p>You need to understand that GOOGLE search will also produces another ranking. Here is what a student will get when searching for computer science.</p>
<p>[The</a> Google University Rankings Computers, Society, and Nature](<a href=“The Google University Rankings « Computers, Society, and Nature”>The Google University Rankings « Computers, Society, and Nature)</p>
<p>So in the end what ever you will do to find information you will get some implicit or explicit ranking.</p>
<p>I am convinced that Morse of USNWR is behind the Forbes ranking system. It is so completely awful and nonsensical on all levels that it actually makes USNWR look good. For one thing (and there are so many one cannot even begin to explain how bad this is. Who’s Who? Rate My Professor??? Are you freakin’ kidding me?) I always thought a big part of college was how academically talented the students are. I mean, that’s pretty much a given, right? Is there one factor in the Forbes ranking that has anything to do with academics and the students themselves? I think there was a mix up and they meant to print this April 1.</p>