Forbes college rankings: Princeton top, UChicago #4

Colleges & Universities University of Chicago
1

<p>Interesting rankings, with UChicago placing ahead of Harvard and Yale, behind Princeton, Williams and Stanford.</p>

<p>[America’s</a> Top Colleges - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/08/01/americas-top-colleges-2/]America’s”>America's Top Colleges)</p>

<p>“The rankings are based on five general categories: post graduate success (32.5%), which evaluates alumni pay and prominence, student satisfaction (27.5%), which includes professor evaluations and freshman to sophomore year retention rates, debt (17.5%), which penalizes schools for high student debt loads and default rates, four-year graduation rate (11.25%) and competitive awards (11.25%), which rewards schools whose students win prestigious scholarships and fellowships like the Rhodes, the Marshall and the Fulbright or go on to earn a Ph.D.”</p>

2

<p>Very interesting. But I have to say that a methodology that ranks West Point at #7 and Annapolis at #43 has trouble passing the smell test. There are some other real puzzlers in there. And like the USNWR rankings this methodology clearly penalizes public universities for having the characteristics of public universities, which doesn’t seem right.</p>

<p>Nevertheless, I may be willing to put up with that – and with the self-satisfied smirks of people at Princeton and Williams – for the emotional satisfaction of seeing Chicago and Yale ranked above Harvard, and many more schools ranked above Duke.</p>

3

<p>I thought West Point has some of the brightest students in the country. No? I have always had great respect for the academy. They deserve to be ranked that high.</p>

4

<p>I think JHS is saying the gap in the Forbes ranking between Army and Navy is inexplicably wide. Both West Point and Annapolis are superb schools, but they are often thought of as being peers (and, on playing fields at least, intense rivals). This Forbes list doesn’t reflect that, which, as JHS points out, doesn’t pass the smell test.</p>

<p>Also, JHS, why the satisfaction in seeing many schools ranked above Duke? Do you have any beef with this school?</p>

5

<p>For me it’s not the school itself, just some blue trolls that lurk here. Anyway, this ranking is almost a year old now, do you guys predict that Chicago will stay in the same position or go down? I honestly don’t see it getting past the first three. **</p>

6

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<p>This ranking was published this morning.</p>

7

<p>Hm, I thought saw somewhere October 2011, my mistake then.</p>

8

<p>Here’s last year’s list: [America’s</a> 20 Top Colleges - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2011/08/03/americas-20-top-colleges/]America’s”>America's 20 Top Colleges)</p>

<p>West Point was still ranked above the Naval Academy, but there wasn’t such a gap (and the Air Force Academy was in between). Chicago was 8th; Amherst was much higher than this year, at 4th, and Yale was 14th.</p>

9

<p>UChicago deserves the #4 place.</p>

10

<p>regarding the pubic universities, I am losing faith in them on a purely undergraduate academic experience front. All the recent financial woes and what not! Stories I hear directly from fellow parents and those I read are not very encouraging: giant lecture halls, hardly any direct/intimate working relationship with faculty, bloated and bureaucratic administration, difficulty in graduating in four years in popular majors if a student changes his major or have not decided on the major from day 1…</p>

<p>Most of their lay prestige predates the current woes, and the international reputation rests, to a significant degree, on graduate level research and academics. </p>

<p>So, if you judge the schools based on purely UNDERGRADUATE academic experience, I can see why they are ranked lower than their brand prestige would dictate. </p>

<p>Especially, for an out of state student, I don’t see how the tuition is ever justified for the quality of the undergraduate academic experience. At UC Berkeley the total cost of attendance for an OOS student rivals pricey private university expense. For that money, ou could get much more concentrated, high quality education at highly regarded private institutions where you sit in a class with less than 20 students, have very easy access to faculty, deal with more responsive administration, declare the major later and still graduate in four years. So, why would you spend $55K/year and be at the mercy of the politicians at the state capitol. </p>

<p>So, am I sounding elitist? I would like to see it as pragmatic. </p>

<p>Of course, for an in state student who is not getting a significant fin aid/scholarship from comparable private schools, top public universities are a BARGAIN, and considering the still outstanding overall reputation and education, I think they are an amazingly good choice. Furthermore, if a student is looking for non-academic experience that cannot be found in smaller, private elite schools, that’s an entirely different story. For instance, other than Stanford where else in top private schools would you have the football rush for a nationally ranked program?</p>

11

<p>JHS;</p>

<p>If I recall correctly, Forbes mentioned in a past article that the academies rank highly in this list because their tuition, and thus indebtedness at graduation, is 0. They probably fail to account for opportunity costs in the rankings, inflating the academies rankings. Still, I would expect them to fit in the top 100 schools - West Point’s numbers are quite good.</p>

12

<p>The Forbes Rankings is nice, but it probably gets 1/5th of the attention that US News does. So I’ll wait another 3 weeks for the announcement of the grand prize. (For the record, it makes a lot of mathematical sense that Chicago will move up in this year’s ranking.)</p>

13

<p>I admire Forbes effort to make a college rankings list that is not based on prestige, but on student results. However, the volatility in the rankings each year reflects poorly on their rankings methodology. Moreover, it fails to account for different specializations among colleges and universities. If a school is unrivaled for music/art, they will be penalized because their alumni will not be making as much money as those institutions that are pipelines for Wall Street.</p>

14

<p>dcsmiss: But it’s Forbes, so it’s not really that surprising that alumni pay is used as a measure of quality, or that schools with strong connections to Wall Street are more highly evaluated than schools with good art programs. Also, one of the reasons why its list changes so much is because the methodology is basically altered every year. (This may be connected to its desire to popularize itself, of course.)</p>

<p>I actually like this year’s methodology, although I would support it more if it actually measured what it intends to measure. Measuring student satisfaction isn’t something that’s done as easily as by looking at the results for RateMyProfessors.com.</p>

15

<ol>
<li><p>snipersas, as Cue7 explained, I wasn’t taking issue with ranking West Point highly; I was taking issue with ranking West Point and Annapolis very differently. In ranking exercises like this, with lots of apples-and-oranges comparisons, I am not surprised to see some gap between Tweedledum and Tweedledee schools, but 36 places seemed like an awful lot. It would be nice to know what, exactly, the USMA is doing so much better than the USNA. For what it’s worth, the limited number of kids I have known over the past few years who wanted to go to a military academy all preferred the USNA after they did their research.</p></li>
<li><p>phuriku, I had the same reaction as you, but Forbes has a long and quite respectable defense of using RateMyProfessor data on its website.</p></li>
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16

<p>I think my main problem with this ranking is that it claims to rank the “top” colleges, yet includes criteria that has nothing to do with quality, like “student indebtedness.” They also omit all reputation measures, which would be admirable had they not claimed to rank the “top” colleges. If they changed the name to “best value,” “best results,” or something like that, I think it would be a more accurate ranking.</p>

17

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<p>I agree completely with what you said regarding public universities. I brought this up in another thread and had to defend myself against multiple posters holding up the sacred value of public education, as well as several accusations of “east coast elitism.” It’s almost always only worth going to a public if it’s in-state and/or significantly cheaper than a private, especially since OOS prices are almost equal to private prices and publics don’t give nearly as much aid as private ones.</p>

18

<p>One thing I find Forbes ranking very interesting is that they combined national research universities with the LACs and showed how they all stack. USNWR rankings do the national research universities and LACs separately and there is no way to compare, say, Amherst to U Chicago.</p>

<p>It was interesting to see so many LACs doing so well on the Forbes ranking… My S2’s non- williams/amherst/swarthmore private LAC showed up quite at a very respectful place, so I am titillated :slight_smile: And, he is a full ride there so quite a “bargain”!</p>

19

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<p>Are you kidding? I have heard rumors to the effect that well-regarded private universities like USC, Notre Dame, Boston College, Northwestern, BYU, and Syracuse occasionally field football teams that compete successfully on a national level. Granted, none of them is quite as well-regarded as Stanford, but that’s not a fair comparison. I doubt that many people would choose any actual public university over Stanford at the same price. But I could see choosing Michigan or Berkeley over any of those colleges, even if they cost a little more.</p>

<p>Yes, their prestige relates to the strength of their faculty and graduate programs. But guess what? That great faculty, and those great grad students, are available to undergraduates who want them. My sister-in-law teaches at a public university. She is considered one of the top 5-10 people in her discipline (this according to the graduate students in that field, at a different university, with whom my kid is friends, and also based on the steady stream of awards and honors she receives). She teaches undergraduates all the time. Undergraduates majors are included in the life of her department. She has turned down many offers to teach at private institutions with more general prestige because she likes teaching the students she teaches at her public university. (She had visited many times at “top” privates, and does not believe that the students are that much better – but they are much wealthier, on average, and they have more leisure to devote themselves to academics.)</p>

<p>My kids’ academically oriented friends who went to high-quality public universities are absolutely on a par, or better, with similar kids who went to private universities. They have been admitted to the most prestigious PhD programs. They have impossible-to-get internships or jobs. That’s not the average outcome for students at their colleges, or course, but it’s an outcome that motivated students can go out and achieve.</p>

20

<p>JHS, I can easily see how a public school can be desirable to a professor. At any top public, I’m willing to bet there are at least 6,000 undergrads who would be competitive at a top 5 private, which is around the undergrad population of one of those private schools. And if your sister-in-law is indeed one of the most respected scholars in her field, she would likely be teaching advanced courses, taken solely by those top kids. That means, to her, the student body absolutely seems 100% motivated and intelligent; but that doesn’t necessarily represent the entire student body.</p>

<p>On the other hand, for a prospective student who is competitive for the top privates, I don’t think such a school would be as desirable. They want to be surrounded by their peers. They don’t want a student body diluted by academically unqualified recruited athletes (which are a lot more common at publics), or having to compete with tens of thousands of other students, or feel lost in lecture halls of 300+ students, if they have a viable (private) alternative.</p>

<p>There are of course arguments in favor of public, but those are mostly cost related. Yet (top) publics are usually only cheaper than (top) privates when considering in-state tuition. Also, I don’t think it’s fair to compare the top 2 publics to privates ranked 20+ (maybe even 30+ if we include LACs). Berkeley and Michigan carry a LOT more prestige than USC, BC, or BYU, and would probably be considered equals of NU and ND.</p>