| College Rankings
Each year U.S. News, along with several other publications, attempts to rate colleges from number 1 to number 1,600 or so. It seems pretty ridiculous to even try to compare a school like UC-Berkeley (with its 29,000 students) to Tufts (with its 6,000 students). Yet that’s exactly what the rating guides do. Just because a profit making company has assigned a rank to a school, it does not mean you should unilaterally believe it. In some ways it’s no more appropriate to rank colleges than it is to rank SAS’s 3,800 kindergartners through seniors from best to worst. How do you compare a senior to a second grader?
The U.S. News ranking are based on the following criteria:
| Peer Assessment |
Presidents and Deans of Admission complete a survey and rate peer institutions from 1 to 5 |
25% |
| Retention |
*The proportion of freshmen who return to campus the following year (20% of retention score)
*The percentage of students graduating within 6 years ((80% of retention score)
|
20% |
| Faculty Resources |
Class size, salary, Profs with highest degree in their field, student-faculty ratio, full-time faculty %
|
20% |
| Selectivity |
*SAT/ACT of enrolling students
*Class rank
*Acceptance rate
|
15% |
| Finances |
Average spending per student |
10% |
| Graduation Rate |
Actual six-year graduation rate compared to the predicted rate of graduation |
5% |
| Alumni Giving |
Average percentage of alumni who gave to their school in the past two years |
5% |
While the managing editor defends the U.S. News magazine's use of SAT scores, alumni donations and administrators' opinions to rate American colleges and universities, critics say the system is flawed. Presidents assign ratings to other institutions, accounting for 25 percent of each school's total score. If the Yankees and the Mets are playing one another in the World Series, and you ask the manager of one what they think of the other, would you expect a terribly objective answer? Before you consider the rankings as definitive, consider what the Stanford and Cornell Presidents have previously said about the rankings. Click here for or a comparison of the methodologies used by the various rankings media.
In case you think that US News is simply being benevolent in helping students by providing ranking, you should realize that the annual ratings edition is its best-selling issue. The reason the rankings change each year is not because of significant changes in an institution, but because US News changes the methodology it uses. Obviously, by changing the method, the rankings are going to change. And that translates to more magazines being sold.
From sports to education, people are captivated by rankings. Before you make your decisions based on one of the many rankings of US college, take a look at this information about college rankings and improve your knowledge about rankings in general. Make certain you read the cautions and controversies about the business of college rankings. If you think that only those students who graduate from an elite university go on to earn their Ph.D., take a look at this Ph.D. productivity list.
US universities (and private high schools) are not the only places being ranked. You can find Canadian university rankings from Maclean's. The same cautions about the U.S. News rankings applies to Maclean's. |
