College Ranking Lists - Forbes, US News and thoughts

Zoro

SILVER ELITE
Or - why I don't like US News ranking...Part I It is less about like and more - what list applies most to a player and parents.

Full disclosure, both my kid's schools look better on Forbes list. But I wanted to know why. Of course there are other lists, but I'm just looking at these two (although US News is really 4). I'm really more posting about the nuances of the US News ranking that is the most often quoted and used.

So here are the lists:
Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/#tab:rank
US News: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandr...ges/rankings/national-universities?int=9ff208

Here is the Methodology:
Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolin...nking-2016-the-full-methodology/#459b237b59a8
US News: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings

Thought #1 - Four Lists vs One based on two things.

Right off the bat you see US News splits the groups into National Universities and Liberal Arts, Regional Universities and Regional colleges. So a student/parent needs to figure that out which list is important. I don' think (guess) most soccer parents are choosing schools on grad programs or National or Liberal Arts. But, that is how they are divided.
National vs Liberal Arts
"National Universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and doctoral programs, and emphasize faculty research. National Liberal Arts Colleges focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education. They award at least 50 percent of their degrees in the arts and sciences."

US News has four factors (grad vs non-grad AND >50% BS vs <50% BS) but two lists. And it puts some science only (BS degrees only) schools as Liberal Arts schools.

It is combining both the need for BS degrees (STEM) and offering masters/doctoral into being called a National University that is a bit confusing. Schools that only offer BS degrees, like the service academies (West Point, Navy, USAFA) or big SAT scoring and science focused Harvey Mudd or Pomona, to name a few, are Liberal Arts schools.

Forbes just ranks them all together.
As most parents are not so interested in grad work at this time (just a guess), the Forbes ranking of putting all together seems to be a better list. Suffice it to say by putting all in the same list a US News #X could be a Forbes X/2 (or X/4 but the Regional s usually are not of the same rank). For example (just an example) National list US News has Berkeley as #20. You might have heard or think that is a top 20 school, and it may be. But is Berkeley better than #1-#20 National Liberal Arts schools? Put them in one list and that changes rankings. People don't like going from #20 to #30 something. So while folks may like things the way they are both/all 4 US News lists in common speak have inflate rankings quoted - by a whole bunch.

More to discuss:
US News Ranking criteria
Financial resources (10 percent) -
Graduation rate performance (7.5 percent)
Student selectivity (12.5 percent)
Undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent)
Retention (22.5 percent)
Alumni giving rate (5 percent)
Faculty resources (20 percent)
 
The reason a student might choose a small liberal arts school over a university that has a higher ranking on the Forbes list is because of they will get much better teaching from the liberal arts school than they will get from the higher ranked university.
 
Those small liberal arts college are on the Forbes list. Pomona, Harvey Mudd. They are not on the US News National list.

They are on the US News Liberal Arts list, right where you would expect to find a liberal arts college.

AFA is #29 on that list.
 
The reason a student might choose a small liberal arts school over a university that has a higher ranking on the Forbes list is because of they will get much better teaching from the liberal arts school than they will get from the higher ranked university.
The Forbes list contains smaller schools that are liberal arts (3 around 2,000 students in the top 10) while the USA National List does not. You have to look on the other list.

But I don't agree with you. Some larger schools have very small classes. And smaller student / teacher ratios than little schools. In general the ones near the top have that as it is a ranking criteria.
I don't think that has much to do with liberal arts, national university or size.
 
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They are on the US News Liberal Arts list, right where you would expect to find a liberal arts college.

AFA is #29 on that list.
But AFA does not give any BA degrees, nor does Navy, or West Point. The Navy and AFA require calculus, chemistry, engineering of every freshman (I don't know of that in any of the National Universities).

Where would you expect to find them or Harvey Mudd? I would not look under liberal arts.
 
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But AFA does not give any BA degrees, nor does Navy, or West Point. The NAvy and AFA require calculus, chemistry, engineering of every freshman (I don't know of that in any of the National Universities).

Where would you expect to find them or Harvey Mudd? I would not look under liberal arts.

BS in Philosophy looks so cool on a diploma.
 
BS in Philosophy looks so cool on a diploma.

I worked for a while with a Naval Academy graduate with a degree in Chemistry. He was a good enough chemist that the Navy sent him to University of Texas to get his PhD. I asked him what he did in the Navy with doctorate in chemistry -- "Flew helicopters".
 
Forbes:
This list of 660 schools distinguishes itself from competitors by our belief in “output” over “input.” Meaning, we’re not interested in what gets a student into college, like our peers who focus heavily on selectivity metrics such as high school class rank, SAT scores and the like. Our sights are set directly on ROI: What are students getting out of college?

Post-Graduate Success (32.5%)
Student Debt (25%)
Student Satisfaction (25%)
Graduation Rate (7.5%)
Academic Success (10%)

(Re-copy)
US News Ranking criteria
Financial resources (10 percent) -
Graduation rate performance (7.5 percent)
Student selectivity (12.5 percent)
Undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent)
Retention (22.5 percent)
Alumni giving rate (5 percent)
Faculty resources (20 percent)
 
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I worked for a while with a Naval Academy graduate with a degree in Chemistry. He was a good enough chemist that the Navy sent him to University of Texas to get his PhD. I asked him what he did in the Navy with doctorate in chemistry -- "Flew helicopters".
When EVERY midshipman, or cadet takes the calculus, the physics, the chem and the engineering ... AND they go to an Academy. Some fly.

I don't know much about West Point and a little about Coast Guard and Merchant Marine.
I only attended sessions for Navy and Air Force.

A graduate from Naval Academy with a degree in History, Economics or anything else gets a Bachelor of Science. I believe the same for AFA.
 
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BS in Philosophy looks so cool on a diploma.
I agree. They are very rare.

I see some schools offer them. I'm searching for the ones that require the whole calc, chem, physics to get that philosophy degree. Maybe you know of some.

Anyway, I would not look for science schools in liberal arts, although US News has changed that. Another definition I read is liberal arts means smaller. I did not know that. But even more I don't see a reason to make 4 lists. That 660 list makes sense. If ranking does matter I would expect most to be in those 660.
 
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Zoro: "But I don't agree with you. Some larger schools have very small classes. And smaller student / teacher ratios than little schools."

Zoro I appreciate the work you have put into the rankings but this is an important point that you should reconsider. I have attended both types of schools and there is no doubt that the small liberal arts school offers superior teaching. At the small liberal arts schools there are no graduate assistants teaching classes. Period. My best friend from a small liberal arts school graduated in May with her BA was accepted for her Phd at Yale where she taught the into bio lab in September only a few months after graduating from college. This would never happen at a small liberal arts school. Also, at the big universities the professors' main focus is on research and getting grant $$$$'s. It is a business. Liberal arts schools place more emphasis on teaching and less-to-none on getting the huge grants.
 
Zoro I appreciate the work you have put into the rankings but this is an important point that you should reconsider. I have attended both types of schools and there is no doubt that the small liberal arts school offers superior teaching. At the small liberal arts schools there are no graduate assistants teaching classes. Period. My best friend from a small liberal arts school graduated in May with her BA was accepted for her Phd at Yale where she taught the into bio lab in September only a few months after graduating from college. This would never happen at a small liberal arts school. Also, at the big universities the professors' main focus is on research and getting grant $$$$'s. It is a business. Liberal arts schools place more emphasis on teaching and less-to-none on getting the huge grants.
I don't think the point is relevant for the lists. Both lists have schools that are small. US News National University list has a school with <1,000. DD's had several classes with 10 kids taught by teachers with 40 years experience, and no teachers aides at all ever. So we are giving examples. If you look at schools in both lists you will find small schools and small classes. Sure the huge schools go on the National University list.
The difference between CalTech and Harvey Mudd is the grad program, and they are on different lists on US News, yet the admin and student ability is about the same. The Harvey Mudd students make more mid-carriers but that can be the focus on application rather than research.
 
When EVERY midshipman, or cadet takes the calculus, the physics, the chem and the engineering ... AND they go to an Academy. Some fly.

I don't know much about West Point and a little about Coast Guard and Merchant Marine.
I only attended sessions for Navy and Air Force.

A graduate from Naval Academy with a degree in History, Economics or anything else gets a Bachelor of Science. I believe the same for AFA.

I understand that it's a matter of policy. My own story is pretty much the opposite. I was a physics major for three years so I got lots of math and science, then I wandered around through majors until graduating in Computer Science - with a BA.
 
Here is a good jumping off point for parents and players to help source which colleges/universities could be right for them. I found these websites to be very beneficial when comparing colleges and getting reviews from actual students on a variety of subjects (academics, housing, food, security, etc.)

If you don't want to limit your college evaluation process to either/or the US News list and the Forbes list, this first one uses input from the major college comparison sites (Money Magazine, US News and World Reports, Forbes) and combines their rankings into a Smart Ranking. Very helpful.
http://colleges.startclass.com/
This one provides helpful information about many different aspects of college life with reviews from the actual attending students.
https://colleges.niche.com/
 
OK - next...
US News:
Financial resources (10 percent)
Do soccer parents care? At ND, DD is in a perfectly functional building and they got rated as the ceilings were too low. Plan is to build a new building. This affects ratings in spending / student. So I expect US News rankings may go up a place in a year or two after they rebuild a perfectly useful building.
 
Another Next.
What is it you REALLY want for your kids from school. I expect for many it would be a successful post school life.

Forbes nails it - 32.5% Success.

US News ranking suggests this in Alumni giving rate (5%) and Undergraduate academic reputation (22.5%) which may translate - kind-of to Success, but those are both different than - how well does the graduate actually do in a job.

Forbes
Post-Graduate Success (32.5%)

US News Ranking criteria
Undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent)
Alumni giving rate (5 percent)
 
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The link is not a ranking site but has great info about every school. Its collected by Department of Education and is a government site.

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov

You can search by school name, or desired degree or what have you.

The database contains things like test scores of accepted students, earnings after college from institutions, population distribution, race, sex and so on. It also shows average debt and student loan payments, cost calculator and top programs at the particular school.

Its not a site to compare rankings but is a candidate site to find the right program or university. It can also help narrow your choices, if you have narrowed your search already.
 
Interesting that the top 35 schools in the Forbes rankings are all private schools (except the Service Academies, which I would argue should be ranked separately). Why would kids who attend top private schools be more likely to be successful than those that attend top public schools? Could it be that Forbes is detecting correlation, rather than causation?
 
Cause is very hard to measure. Those school brand names seem to help get jobs and make connections.
 
Cause is very hard to measure. Those school brand names seem to help get jobs and make connections.

What I can say regarding these top 20 or so schools versus ordinary UC/CSU kind of schools is that certain opportunities only (for all practical purposes) exist for the top school grads. Clearly its major dependent but generally speaking, grads from the top 20s are hired and placed on a different track than all others. This certain was the case with when I used to work for one of the Fortune 20 company.

Also, this year, it was reported that Goldman Sachs (GS) had over 250K summer internship applications submitted. I don't know how many they hire but its nowhere near 10K interns. Which means those coming from top 20 have a significant advantage over others in terms of landing a high-end internship positions (and is important because its essentially 2.5 month interview on-the-job for upon graduation).

While you may say that who cares about GS because your kid is going to engineering or computer science or medicine or whathaveyou. The point is its not just GS but its can be at any top company in your field of interest and have a similar situation. Just how many internship apps do you think FB, Apple, Google and so on get?

Once on the job, clearly, the performance will determine what happens to the hire but just think about where one is hired into. My old employer used to hire these top 20 school kids and place them into a 2 year job rotation while they evaluated them for best placement in the company. These hires were sent to different businesses within the company and functions, and usually assigned to a VP for a mentorship. The rest of college hires are hired into a open requisition of job postings that place them directly onto tasks in a particular discipline (engineer 1, accountant 1 and so on). Both cases may have the exact same graduating degree but placed very differently, based on which school they graduated from.

By 5 or so years into the job, the difference between any schools have pretty much have fallen to the back burner (but not gone), as individual performance on-the-job is paramount over what school they attended. The difference is, though, just where you are in the company 5 years in. Chances are very high that they are not in the same place, promotion-wise and career path-wise, since the exposure level is so significantly different between the two.

The pattern of behavior by the employers' perspective of these top school hires is very similar to how colleges recruit national team players virus others. In other words, there is a built in belief that these students are more capable, rightly or wrongly, than others by association initially.

Just sharing my experience and observation of college hires at a very large corporation.
 
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