I am a percussionist planning on pursuing a career in music. My search process was so different than what I see here at CC. Rankings are not available or were meaningless. It all seems to be word of mouth. My school & private teachers were my guide. My parents aren’t in the music world but they did a lot of asking too. Maybe there can be more posts and information for music in the future.
My daughter and I went onto CollegeBoard.com and put in the majors she was interested in (interior design and architecture) and her sport - rowing and made a list of schools that had both. Then we looked at Design intelligence’s rankings of interior design and architecture programs. Came up with a list of about 6-9 schools that had what she was interested in - 3 top 10 programs and 3 “safety” schools.
I have purchased the pdf file for the past three years to see how the rankings change and the comments contained in the articles. Several schools were consistently in the top ten. Also I thought the students evaluations were interesting (they got 700 students to respond to a questionnaire about whether they would recommend their school) and the rankings within the major like sustainable design and cross discipline experience were valuable since my daughter is interested in interior design and architecture.
The rankings also show the rankings over the past several years so if you buy the latest version you will see how the schools have done in the past 5 or 6 years. I think it is worth the $ if you are serious about interior design, architecture, industrial design or landscape architecture.