<p>Students and alumni are fine, but they’re biased. The students at UGA will obviously tend to strongly support UGA because, 1. that is the school they have experienced, 2. they made a conscious choice to attend UGA over Alabama or Tennessee, so they clearly liked the school at some point, and 3. they have a vested interest in others’ opinion of the school. </p>
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<p>That link does a good job explaining why USNews is a very weak system and biases towards private schools and party schools. However, the ranking systems based on prestige, hiring rates, and salaries (e.g. THE, QS) are still valid systems.</p>
<p>But let’s assume you don’t trust the rankings. If that’s the case, the best place to start is the career services department. Look at the actual job prospects and graduate schools students attend, compare the percentage of students with jobs / graduate school at placement, and look at the starting salaries. That sort of data can’t be manipulated and isn’t biased.</p>