<p>I don’t have any bone to pick with Lynchburg College. In fact I was there visiting with D#2 ten days ago. My argument is with PR, USNWR and other college ranking groups who create “Best” lists and then leave off obvious choices (or in USNWR’s case punish a college for not filling out the survey – Reed the #47 LAC, are you kidding me?). As Carolyn so wisely pointed out, these “Best” lists are used as screening tools by many. I wonder how many kids for whom Occidental would be a perfect fit will be told “Pick a college that’s in the book.”</p>
<p>It seems to me that there is this important paradox at work here. As soon as you really begin to look at colleges with the intent of finding a good fit and match–rankings are really pointless. Yet the culture (including the CC screen, which lists access to several forms of rankings…) cannot let go of the idea that there IS a “number 1”–and that it is empirically more desireable than “number 7”. </p>
<p>I do not have the wits to figure out how one would organize a boycott of USNWR or any of the others–but the prospect makes me smile…</p>
<p>At least on this forum kids and parents are offered some evidence of how superficial, fickle, or misleading rankings can be. I hear families discussing them some places as if they have validity, reliability and utility. To me they are one of the more insidious forms advertising takes–and as parents it is important to guard the young from misleading propaganda…</p>
<p>The other Supreme Court Justice from Centre was Fred Vinson, who is kept alive in Centre lore as a portrait named “Dead Fred”. “Dead Fred” still makes appearances at various campus events.</p>
<p>My siblings and I were the first in our family to attend college. That did not keep our large extended family from having its own college rankings which consisted of the following:</p>
<ol>
<li>Notre Dame (do I need to add we’re Catholic?)</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Everywhere else </li>
</ol>
<p>When we set our sights on number 3 we took lots of ill-informed flack. With respect to my own children, I am delighted that they have access to many resources from which to do preliminary research and that they are more interested in fit than fashion, something DH and I encourage. It is the disappearance of an Occidental from a major guidebook that purports to list the best colleges that serves to point out how arbitrary rankings can be.</p>
<p>But there are so many rankings out there – would a student (or worst, a GC) actually decide not to apply to a certain school if, for example, it wasn’t listed in Princeton, but was in USNWR’s Top 50 LACs or Kiplinger’s Best Buys, or Colleges That Changes Lives, or Choosing the Right College, or the Unbiased Guide, or etc., etc. ?</p>
<p>Yes- I believe so. Some students/parents won’t even look at a school unless it is highly ranked. Many use the rankings from US news and refer to schools as tiered. They compare average SAT scores as if those scores were obtained in college.
We are a society that “shops”. We want to be assured we are getting the “very best”, and are willing to pay for the privlege. However there are way more products out there than we can keep up with & we rely on consumer guides and rankings to help us do so- however subjective they may be. ( I am using the royal “we” of course- my daughter attends a school that formerly was 2nd tier in US News but now has risen to top 50 for some reason)
I think that a major guide and yes I do consider PRinceton Review as major- their blurbs were always right on with the schools that I had experience with, so I assumed that they were equally correct with the school that I didn’t have experience with. But leaving Occidental out of their top rankings, just makes the point that the purpose is to sell , and not necessarily to give parents the depth and breadth of information needed to help students make a decision.</p>
<p>Stanford admissions data is all wrong. Noted it last night.</p>
<p>I agree with EK there is so much out there, and for some parents it is overwhelming so they rely on rankings to decide which school is better than another…it is just a step up from those families (like mine when I was younger) who just know that college is college…</p>
<p>The more involved search is what lead me and I suspect a number of others to CC in the first place. I used CC, various college rankings, including their generic placement match ups, police reports, student blogs… I wanted to be as informed as possible…so on those rare occassions when I was asked, I could give an informed opinion.</p>
<p>My D decided on a University that was somewhat in the middle of the schools where she was accepted…primarily based upon the feel…fit remains the most important consideration for anyone. The more you know the better your chance at getting that fit right the first time.</p>
<p>Transylvania U. is for kids who want a stake in their future.</p>
<p>Someone with good photoshop skills could have a lot fun putting fangs on all the folks at the Transy website.</p>
<p>My interest in the Transylvania/Harlan connection comes from an article I read many years ago–I think it was by George Will–on the makeup of the Supreme Court at the time of Plessy V. Ferguson, the case in which, by a 8-1 majority, the USSC decided that “separate but equal” racial segregation was the law of the land. Will’s point, as I recall it, was how wrong we are to be overly-swayed by credentials when evaluating public officials. The court then, as now was dominated by judges who had attended the “top” schools. Chief Justice Fuller was Bowdoin/Harvard, Justice Brown, who wrote the majority opinion, was Yale/Harvard. The other justices had attended Harvard, Yale, Williams, Wesleyan, and Georgetown (one had no formal degree at all). Harlan, who had attended schools which few today have ever heard of, and whose law school name causes reflexive snickers, was the only one who made the right call.</p>
<p>ldorochi - being eliminated from the book might also cause a school to fall off the radar screen for some students. 5 years ago my family wasn’t using USNews rankings or the internet to help my son select a college – I had purchased 2 college guide books, one of which was Princeton Review, for my son - who had decided he wanted a small LAC. Basically, the only LAC’s he looked at were those that were listed in the PR book, simply because that is what we were working from. He did receive mail - in some instances quite aggressive - from some LAC’s - but if the LAC wasn’t in the book the mail really didn’t make an impact. We were just deluged with too much mail at the time. </p>
<p>Obviously Occidental was on our radar then, though he didn’t apply. But it certainly was on one of the preliminary lists he worked from.</p>
<p>Despite the failings of PR, I still like it for college selection because of its format - and I purchased 2005 edition last year for my daughter. I also bought her the Fiske guide (something I had missed with my son) - but I’ve seen that in terms of actual use, she much prefers the PR guide. I think the layout of 2 pages per college - with consistent presentation of various types of info on each page - is more useful for reference purposes; that is, it is easy to look up a particular college and know exactly on the page you are going to find a certain type of information. </p>
<p>I also think that those top 20 lists are very important for getting a sense of campus culture - thought it really isn’t a good idea to start with the lists. Better to start with the college and then check to see what lists it is on - it doesn’t matter if a college makes a particular list or not - but it can quickly tell you if you are on the wrong track if the college you are looking at shows up on the wrong lists. (With “wrong” being whatever it is you don’t like). Most of my son’s choices made it onto at least one of the “tree-hugger” or “reefer-madness” lists - in fact, the overlap of lists was quite impressive, and helped confirm that we were on the right track as far as identifying colleges that were a good fit. No - we weren’t looking for schools where my son could easily score some pot – my son just wanted a place where he would feel at home with his left-coast progressive political bent and sports-averse nature (where other left-leaning intellectual nerds could be found). PR pretty much made it easy to figure that out, even though there were slight changes in individual lists from year to year.</p>
<p>Anyway, it has nothing to do with “rankings.” My son’s top choices included colleges that were then on the US News 2nd or 3rd tier. But we had assumed that a book that listed the 350 “best” colleges would end up having the basic array of colleges that would be appropriate to choose from. </p>
<p>I think the omission of UC Irvine is actually far more telling - because as a Californian I would be extremely skeptical of a listing of top 300+ colleges that failed to include all 9 UC campuses. In any case, if that were my primary source of college info, it would force me to go out and buy another book. I know darn well that Irvine is <em>not</em> the lowest “ranked” UC campus.</p>
<p>Given the level of methodological rigor in the Princeton Review publications it wouldn’t surprise me if someone just left the Occidental and Irvine pages in a dtp file somewhere and forgot about them.</p>
<p>You want irony?
Source: Princeton Review web site,<a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/profiles/rankings.asp?listing=1023235<ID=1&intbucketid=[/url]”>http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/profiles/rankings.asp?listing=1023235<ID=1&intbucketid=</a></p>
<p>What a difference a year makes.</p>
<p>Calmom, it’s not even a “what a difference a year makes” situation – Occidental is in the current (2006) version of Best Value Colleges as well. It’s the only school in the Best Value book that is not also in the Best 361 book.</p>
<p>In my most humble opinion these polls, surveys, etc. such as the Princeton review, US news and wp etc. etc. are just such much bull.</p>
<p>Besides the absurdity of not listing Occidental, as noted above, for years Pomona was listed as having the happiest students and now is nowhere on the list. Last year the school was number one. </p>
<p>In another survey they list Pepperdine as having the most beautiful campus. Yes, it has a great view of the pacific ocean, but the campus itself is an ill conceived mess that looks like nothing more than just another condo project-talk about a lack of any architectural integrity or design.</p>
<p>There just is no replacement for the hard work of looking into schools on your own, visiting their websites, visiting the schools themselves, finding alums in your city, speaking to qualified counselors, etc. etc. Polls and reviews and the value placed on prestige (popularity) are just horrible ways to choose where you will spend your college years (or to choose just about anything).</p>
<p>Bullwinkle, yes, it’s a lot like the “best place to live” list that comes out every year, and then changes inexplicably the next.</p>
<p>this is from Oxy student paper</p>
<p>Lack of response from Admisnistrain prompts PR to
drop Oxy from its 2006 list of top colleges and universities.</p>
<p>Although Oxy had a spot, PR’s staff received no assitance from Oxy’s
administration when trying to reach students last academic year, and
was unable to gather enough infomation about the college.
"With Oxy last year, we weren’t able to work with the administration.
We contacted them several times. Editor MP said.
“Oxy otherwise would have been in this edition of the book”</p>
<p>The PR sent an email oxy Communication Office asking employees to pass a sruvey on to the student body.</p>
<p>Director of Communications J.T. chose not to send out the e-mail because he felt it was a very unscientific way to collect data about the school.</p>
<p>" I have reservations about Oxy becoming a partner in such an
unscientific approach. J.T. said. “It’s easier for people to skew the results”</p>
<p>PR encourage Oxy sutdents to take this survey. Without enough student imput, Oxy will notmake the RR. in 2007. But the administaratio hasn’t decided if it will send outthe survey next year.</p>
<p>"Now we have a clear idea of what PR Criteria is, we have to sit down and discuss this . J. T said.</p>
<p>Well, I suppose it’s Oxy’s administration’s decision as to whether they want to go along with the PR folks. But I think they’re cutting off their nose to spite their face.</p>
<p>"“My argument is with PR, USNWR and other college ranking groups who create “Best” lists and then leave off obvious choices (or in USNWR’s case punish a college for not filling out the survey – Reed the #47 LAC, are you kidding me?).”</p>
<p>For all it shortcomings, USNews should not be compared to Princeton Review. Even if USN blatantly manipulates the data by developing dubious criteria, the Princeton Review accomplishes the double feat of allowing an non-scientific process to be manipulated by the survey respondents. The process must have been put together by Chicago democrats: want a good score? Vote early and … often. </p>
<p>Frankly, the entire PR ranking is a complete joke, and one of bad taste to boot. Ever checked their “selectivity” rankings? How does Chicago compare to UC Davis? PR is simply not worth the paper it is printed on. Even Jay Matthews’ research is more scientific. And that says it all! </p>
<p>Lastly, the issue of Reed is a non story. Reed is getting more mileage of its rebellious attitude than most schools. Except for faculty resources, all the information is available to the USNews researchers, and to the general public since Reed publishes its CDS form on its web site. </p>
<p>There are many scandalous distortions on the USN rankings, but Reed is NOT of them. While they have a few criteria that should yield a better ranking, others do not support a higher rank.</p>