Okay, on to the methodology.
I think student outcomes are important, and I’m a big fan of the graduation rate impact and years to pay off net price. I’ll have to dig in more to see what I think of the salary impact with respect to what a student would have earned at any other college. But the fact that 70% of a school’s rating is based on these three things (and that 1/3 of the total overall rating is based on salary impact) seems WAY too high. Just because one doesn’t choose the most monetarily rewarded fields doesn’t mean anything about the quality of the education one received.
This category was absolutely stunning for me. Assessing the quality of colleges and only giving 20% to the learning environment is just jaw-dropping for me. The quality and frequency of learning opportunities is only worth 4%?!? And that’s worth the same amount as the satisfaction with the facilities?!?!? This area of the methodology was really problematic for me.
I’m all for diversity, but making it worth 50% of the amount that the learning environment is worth is just making me shake my head. I will say that I like the first metric in this category with respect to the satisfaction and frequency of interactions of people from different backgrounds. It doesn’t matter how “diverse” a college is if there aren’t quality interactions between various groups.
Ah, this is where we differ. The omitted schools you mentioned already have their place in the hallowed lists of most. People already know about the quality of education those schools can provide. But just because a school isn’t well-known for its quality doesn’t mean that it’s not providing a quality education. So even when there are lists with whom I take issue with their methodology (ahem), I still think the lists are useful for highlighting schools that we don’t know about and that we might want to investigate further to see if they could be a good option for our own kids. These types of lists are a good resource for finding hidden gems.
(To be clear, inclusion on a list does not make a school a hidden gem, but a different methodology may have identified a school that has otherwise been under the radar and further research on the school beyond the ranking may then help to substantiate it as a gem of a school.)