<p>The thing is, even if you get a major in English from Princeton and find no jobs in fields that are of interest to you, you don’t have to end up unemployed. You could work in finance and raise some money and then try again. It’s not a marker of quality. Definitely not, especially not for fields like art and music.</p>
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<p>As much as people don’t want to admit it, many people, including high school and college students, want to make as much money as possible, and the high pay levels associated with investment banking are the attractor for such people. After all, it is an essential service in a modern economy, but the service providers are in a position to skim off considerable amounts of the money that passes by them.</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl:</p>
<p>Yet you get riled up by people tiering schools by access to high finance (among other things).</p>
<p>I personally wouldn’t care if you tiered schools by how well they do in the arts. Feel free to do so.</p>
<p>All of this just promotes the point that fit is far more important than (broad, at least) rankings: urban/rural/suburban setting, academic strengths, size of student body, class size, climate, school spirit, activities, price, etc… are so very important, far more important than rankings. And different preferences/answers in those variables explains why someone might choose Clemson over Columbia or Purdue over Princeton.</p>
<p>Fit matters a lot. So does the quality of education. So do potential post-grad avenues (well, that might matter only in a few fields).</p>
<p>"As much as people don’t want to admit it, many people, including high school and college students, want to make as much money as possible, and the high pay levels associated with investment banking are the attractor for such people. "</p>
<p>Yes, I GET why it’s attractive to many students. That’s obvious. </p>
<p>Even a small liberal arts college typically offers about 50 courses of study
(<a href=“Academics :: Swarthmore College”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/academics.xml</a>). Only a couple of these have the remotest connection with banking & finance. Only a fairly small fraction of students at top colleges major in those fields.
On the other hand, the most popular college major in America, by far, is business.
More than 20% of all college students major in business. Yet, this is a major that many of our most prestigious, selective colleges don’t even offer. There seems to be a big mismatch between what most Americans expect out of a college education and what America’s “top” colleges actually teach. So it isn’t surprising that many people judge college quality by indicators that have little to do with what those colleges actually teach, or with their high-minded mission statements (which typically make reference to citizenship, leadership, knowledge discovery & dissemination).</p>
<p>Look at the Latin mottos of the world’s universities:
<a href=“List of university and college mottos - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_university_mottos</a>
On that page, the word “knowledge” occurs 109 times.
The word “truth” occurs 104 times.
The word “science” occurs 45 times.
The word “wisdom” occurs 39 times.
The word “entrepreneur” occurs 4 times.
The word “job(s)” occurs zero times.
The word “money” occurs zero times.</p>
<p>If we take college mission statements and latin mottos seriously, then what does that say about how we should evaluate them? To me, it suggests that the metrics that should matter are the ones that measure knowledge discovery and dissemination by the faculty, the quality of the learning environment, the ability of schools to attract the best students and professors from all over the country, or their ability to motivate and prepare students for future knowledge-creation.
Examples: faculty publication and citation volumes; research expenditures per capita; PhD productivity; average class sizes; library volumes per capita; faculty salaries; faculty awards & distinctions; student selectivity.
Non-examples: average alumni salaries; ROTC and Peace Corps participation; Who’s Who entries; iBank recruitment.</p>
<p>The best rankings for undergraduates would be the ones that use the good (knowledge-related) metrics most relevant to undergraduates. In that respect, in my opinion, the US News rankings are better than the international rankings. </p>
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<p>I think it’s a point of exclusivity. There are a number of employers who only recruit at ‘top schools.’ And even among those top schools, they only recruit the top students from the top schools. Banking is typically viewed to be among the most (if not the most) exclusive of all fields of employment. A similar point can be made with consulting and other fields. Perhaps it’s assumed that if a given school has access to these exclusive jobs, its alumni are capable of getting well-paying jobs that are much less exclusive as well.</p>
<p>Naturally, people want ‘guarantees.’ They want themselves, or their children, to be ‘guaranteed’ a job after graduation. And so, it’s assumed, if I go to this college, or go to this school, I’ll be guaranteed a well-paying job and will have a successful life. I think a point many don’t consider is that employers don’t hire degrees or majors. Employers hire people. And the people they hire tend to be people that are most qualified to fill a specific need of the business. I have no doubt that people from more prestigious schools get passed over for people with better work experience all the time.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say the prestige of a school doesn’t matter. I mean, from an HR perspective, you’ll want to do anything you can to eliminate the first batch of applicants. It may be easier to get an interview if you go to a more prestigious school. And the only reason I think that’s the case is because it’s an indicator of intelligence and hard work. Even more so if you graduate with a high GPA. But once you get that interview, it all falls onto you. What you’re qualified for, and how well you interview. But that’s a point that’s really difficult to understand when you’re in high school, or an undergraduate.</p>
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<p>LOL! That’s a poor translation on Wikipedia’s part. Scientia in latin means knowledge, not science. Unless we want to assume that the University of Ottawa’s Motto really is “God is the Master of Science.”</p>
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<p>In that case, they also should assume that the same alumni would be capable of getting well-paying jobs even if they choose to attend less selective, lower ranked colleges. That’s what some (not all) research shows.
<a href=“Hoxby vs. Dale-Krueger on the Selectivity Premium - Econlib”>http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/11/hoxby_vs_dale-k.html</a></p>
<p>At any rate, if you believe the most important factors in choosing a college have to do with financial return on investment, then why would you want to rely on rankings that do not measure that? Neither US News nor the major international rankings do. Many students would get a better ROI from choosing a highly marketable *major<a href=“like%20engineering%20or%20CS”>/i</a> at an affordable college, rather than a less marketable major at a more prestigious (but higher costing) college.</p>
<p>@tk21769 The word “work” appears at least once, though.</p>
<p><a href=“need help in deciding where to apply! international student. - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>need help in deciding where to apply! international student. - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;
<p>obviously the ranking criteria differs throughout the world, and lets not forget that there are some amazing institutions that might be ranked higher than some prestigious US schools. This could result in some nationally high ranked schools being pushed sown the international list, or maybe even off of it completely</p>
<p>It does seem like World/International rankings pays more attention to popularity of international presence at these institutions, which inturn translates into population/popularity contest.
Their rankings has less parameters that has to do with quality and outcome of education as USNEWS or FORBES does.
So, if academic reputation/quality/satisfaction after graduation is your goal, and you want to attend school in the US, then avoid the world ranking as it will most likely be misleading.
Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>The reason why different rankings produce different results is because they measure different things, for different purposes. Google for the methodology description of each ranking that interests you. You’ll see that US News, Forbes, Washington Monthly, ARWU, etc., all have different sets of criteria/weights. </p>