I tried digging around the site, but no luck. Do you know if they used a 6 year graduation rate or 4 year, in their criteria?
The subjective doesn’t become less subjective when you assign numerical values to subjective components, sum up the numbers and create a numbered list.
That’s a fair point and one I agree with. Although you can’t really use any individual ranking system as the bible, it has always interested me that many of the same schools appear on the top X list yr over yr for MANY yrs. That’s a form of stability and I think would give the applicant a good sense of general quality of the institution.
As an example, if we look at state schools, going back many yrs (as long as I ever cared about this stuff - say the 80s) , UVA, UNC, UMich, UCB and a few others have stood out as outstanding large state flagships. There are newcomers to the list but these are the pillars of large state school excellence. They are for a reason. You can use them as a comparison to other options as they are very difficult to gain entry.
They use a 6-year graduation rate. This 6-year graduation rate contributes 5.7% of the overall ranking. It’s a higher percentage than my earlier post because I didn’t notice that they are counting 6-year graduation 3 times in their methodology. Each of the 3 times has a different weighting. 5.7% on graduation rate is a low weighting compared to other popular ranking lists. They also have a 2% weighting for the retention rate – % of full-time undergrad students who re-enroll in the following year.
The state schools all appear to have in state tuition. Schools like UVA and Michigan, which has almost 50% OOS students, cost almost $70,000+ a year OOS, with little to no financial aid for OOS students. I wonder how that figures in to the cost.
Also, the net cost seems really low. If you talk to most people from middle to upper middle income families, their net costs are nowhere near this low at private colleges.
This touches on the main problem with all of such lists – the weightings they use to make the rankings order are completely different from what a particular student prioritizes.
For example, this ranking list uses average net cost after FA. A particular student doesn’t care about the average net cost. They care about what the school is going to cost them. Their personal cost may be completely different if they are out of state apply to a public, or a full-pay kid at HYPSM, or a low income kid at HYPSM, or if they get a scholarship, or countless other situations that would cause them to differ from the average.
The category with the highest weighting appears to be admit rate. While some students do care about admit rate, I’d expect choosing the college with the lowest admit rate is not a top priority for the vast majority of students.
The weighting ranking also includes things like proximity of bars per square mile (higher is better), number of women’s basketball championships won since 2000, percentage who play varsity sports (higher is better), percentage out of state (higher is better), and many other personal values that a large portion of students are not going to care about and/or may prioritize in the opposite direction of the ranking.
Looking at such lists may be amusing or help identify selective, high-endowment per student type colleges. However, a particular student should choose colleges based on his personal priorities, which are almost certainly going to be completely different from the priorities used to make the list, resulting in a completely different set of top colleges.
The net prices are the average cost among all individuals receiving aid. Which is a pretty pointless statistic, given that schools have different thresholds for aid, and that aid awards differ widely among students who qualify for aid. So while the “net price” stats have value inasmuch as they serve as a signpost for a school’s ability to provide financial aid in general, their applicability to individual families is pretty negligible.
@sbdad12 UVA actually meets the demonstrated financial need of both instate AND out of state students. Now, whether the university and family agree on their level of need is another story, but that can be true at any school.
Top 30 Best Colleges in America
Anyone curious as to #31 ?
Anyone willing to post a link to the list which includes all ranked schools ? Or at least the 92 which received a grade of “A+” ?
@Publisher: Search “2021 Best Colleges in America – Niche.”
Even if you want to agree with Niche’s methodology for rankings, their most basic data, such as acceptance rates is wildly inaccurate, or at best several years old for some schools.
31 is Tufts and 32 is West Point. The Business Insider article has the link to Niche. CC won't allow a direct link to the site (at least when I tried yesterday it got bounced).
I have always thought there should be a standardized set of metrics that every school should disclose in a common format, with an emphasis on outcomes by major. It’s not so much a ranking but a table of basic facts on:
Gross costs (tuition, r&b, books and fees).
Demographics.
25-75th percentiles on entering class gpa and test scores
Percentage graduating 4, 5, 6 years
The following outcome data by major/school
Percent employed within 1 year after graduation.
Median salary
Median gpa of those employed vs median gpa of all in the major
Top 10 employers
Percent attending graduate/professional school
Median gpa and GRE/MCAT/LSAT/GMAT of successful candidates by graduate study or professional school
Top 10 graduate/professional programs
I am sure there are other key factors that I have not listed.
While in many respects outcomes are as driven by the quality of the students to begin with as by the quality of the school, you can compare across peers.
31 Tufts University;
32 USMA at West Point;
33 Williams College followed by several other LACs.
Point well taken. Michigan, on the other hand, gives nearly none for OOS. DD accepted and we had to decide between $70K/year OOS and $20K at ASU Barrett Honors. Decision was not difficult, and I’m a Michigan alum.
I think with the situation of online classes this year, I think my daughter made the right choice.
Colleges take little into account when you compare someone coming from California vs someone from Kansas. Our living expenses out here in CA are much higher than in KS, yet family income is family income for financial aid.
These Top 30 lists are worthless. Can you imagine being 22 years old and stuck with massive debt? But hey, at least I can point to this Top 30 list!
Sorry for you Apple fans out there, but it’s like Android vs iOS. I can pay 2-3X for an Apple phone, or buy an Android phone that does the same things as an Apple, for a lot less. But the Apple brand…
The top 30 list considered COA as a factor after applying all grants.
Important to note that the Top 30 Colleges list looks at factors affecting the entire undergraduate student body.
If one were to focus just on specific majors, then the list would be quite different.
Also, with respect to Honors Colleges & Honors Programs within large public universities, there are separate rankings which focus exclusively on these programs.
P.S. Also worth noting is that few if any would assert that the Top 30 colleges on this list do not belong there. I suspect that those who demean such lists are most upset that a certain school or schools are not on the list–essentially that limiting a top schools list to just 30 schools is wrong when there are at least 100 US colleges & universities deserving of such praise. I agree.
These rankings are sponsored by Niche. No one takes Niche all that seriously.