What is the best way to judge the quality of a college?

[ucbalumnus]

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@tk21769

Still, you probably want to include your GPA and test scores in that initial filter, unless: (a) you believe there are “hidden gems” out there with much lower average stats than yours, (b) you don’t want to exclude them either from your initial filter nor from your follow-on research, (c) you have a reliable quality-assessment approach to identify the excellent (but less selective) schools.

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<p>A student doing an initial college search would use his/her GPA/rank/scores to compare with schools’ admission selectivities in order to find out which schools are realistic for him/her in terms of admission. No sense in spending a lot of time researching schools where there is no chance of admission. It may seem weird to some posters here who are fixated on elite-selectivity colleges and disdain all other schools, but there are students whose first choice is a safety*, so they need to just put in one application and be done.</p>

<ul>
<li>A real safety with 100% chance of admission and 100% chance of affordability, not a near-safety with subjective criteria or holistic admission that some posters refer to when they write “safety”.</li>
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