US News & World Report Ranking

Ms.Ladybug
Wed, 14 Sep 2011 02:58:55 +0000

One thing I don’t really understand about the USNWR Liberal Arts College rankings, is that there seems to be apples-to-oranges comparisons in their chosen list of schools to rank. Specifically, why are military academies and women’s only colleges included, when they have self-selected, much narrower applicant pools? Forgive me if I am a dunce about this, or if this issue has been hashed out to death somewhere else on these forums, but can the selectivity rates (15% of the rankings) of these colleges be meaningfully compared to the rates of co-ed and/or civilian liberal arts colleges? Also, Harvey Mudd is first and foremost a math, science and engineering college, with humanities courses required of students, but again, with a very self-selected, narrower applicant pool than a liberal arts college that recruits students of all stripes. How can there be a meaningful ordinal ranking of colleges with significantly different student bodies and educational missions?