<p>I am continually amused by how many high school students and parents take magazine college rankings so seriously, when, in fact, these rankings are based on an arbitrarty list of weighted criteria and on some faulty data sources. Forbes, for instance, considers professors ratings based on college student surveys. And, US News includes subjective criteria such as “peer assessments” sent to a very few select college administrators or total endowment without adjusting for size of school. </p>
<p>Perhaps students and parents should collect their own facts about colleges and weigh them against their own preferences. No matter what methodology you use to “rank” colleges, only one school can be “number 1”, so it just ratches up the anxiety of students to aim for that “number 1” school. </p>
<p>If you want a mid-sized university in a national historic district with a flexible/innovative curriculum, a tilt to undergraduate education, lots of research and independent study options, a very intellectual student body and a consistently top producer of Fullbright, Rhodes and other academic scholarships, then please consider Brown. Brown alumni are leaders in business, the arts, education, law, medicine, and politics, and are overwhelmingly happy with their Brown education. Brown does not want to be Harvard or UPenn or Williams. It has its own identity and, frankly, a quite successful franchise.</p>