USNews Peer Assessment

calmom
Sun, 21 Aug 2005 21:47:14 +0000

The data and sorting at the US News site is extremely valuable – well worth the $14.95. Back when my son was applying to colleges - and the sortable table was available for free - that is ALL we looked at. His top choice colleges were no where near the top of the “rankings” - but they kept coming up on the top of sort criteria that was important to him.

US News has a “compare” feature that allows a printout of comparable data for up to 6 colleges. D. just asked me to print out the info for the dozen or so colleges now on her short list. Certainly saves on communication time between mom & d. - I brought her the printout & explained what to look for in the financial aid data, and now I know that d. and I are on the same page in terms of what to expect in terms of colleges. One of her safeties fares surprisingly well on the data comparison charts in terms of financial aid, class size, student/prof ratio etc. – and also happens to have programs ranging from adequate to strong in areas of interest for her. So I think that as long as you are knowledgeable enough to TOTALLY IGNORE the “rank” AND the “peer assessment” score – and focus mostly on the hard data - it is a wonderful tool.

The fact is that “peer assessment” is just the cheat mechanism that US News needs to make the “rankings” come out as expected – if they just relied on hard, statistical data, Harvard & Princeton don’t come out on top. The more they include data related to actual experience on campus - the more the deck would shuffle with unexpected results. So its a big fudge factor – adding in subjective make-weights to keep the objective data from dictating results you don’t like.

That’s not to say that one school isn’t “better” than another - no one doubts that Princeton is a better college overall than Drexel – but the problem is that we don’t need US News to tell us that. We know where the colleges fall generally along the spectrum - it doesn’t matter whether Harvard or Princeton or Yale is the ‘best’ – they are THE SAME in terms of overall quality no matter how you cut it. Just as there is no qualitative difference between UC Berkeley & U of Michigan. But the bottom line is whether a particular college is a good fit for a particular student – and for that the data is important.

I’ve found another site that is a great resource for data and “rankings” - but very subjective, almost entirely from student surveys. It’s called http://campusdirt.com. Their salary-predictor along with ROI (return on investment) figures are a real eye opener. It actually gives very specific college “report cards” and ranking figures. I’d take it somewhat with a grain of salt … but I do see a value in throwing in factors like available of parking and quality of dorm food, along with quality of curriculum, in evaluating the college. After all, the kid has to live there. And personally, I think the opinions of students (they have surveyed 80,000) - may mean a little more to my kid than “peer assessment.” What does my kid care what the president of Swarthmore thinks of her college? Isn’t it more important what a recent grad thinks?