Forbes.com's take on America's Best Colleges

[Josh '99]

[quote Rita]We're #15 in the US News and World Report poll.

There is a lot of sibling kissing going on in this year's rankings.[/quote]Well, at least we're ahead of Brown.  When/how did Penn (sucks) work their way up to #4?

[Al DeFlorio]

[quote Josh '99][quote Rita]We're #15 in the US News and World Report poll.

There is a lot of sibling kissing going on in this year's rankings.[/quote]Well, at least we're ahead of Brown.  When/how did Penn (sucks) work their way up to #4?[/quote]
Penn is only #4 if you think there's validity to the USNWR formula.  Duke is also very much overrated, based on my experience in the higher ed world.

Berkeley, which ought to be top five (maybe top three) in any ranking, is sitting at #21.  This is ridiculous, and strictly a result of yield and selectivity calculations, which hurts all public institutions, including part-statutory Cornell.  Berkeley, UCLA, Illinois, and several other publics have a stronger faculty than Duke or Dartmouth or Brown.  Stronger than Penn, too.

[Rosey]

[quote Al DeFlorio]Berkeley, UCLA, Illinois, and several other publics have a stronger faculty than Duke or Dartmouth or Brown.  Stronger than Penn, too.[/quote]
I have to imagine stronger than WUSTL or Northwestern, as well.

The US News ranking is guilty of false precision: they put together a formula that looks all scientific and therefore lends it an air of credibility to uneducated or gullible folks, but winds up being useless by weighting inputs according to a fixed set of weights that represent nothing more than the biases of the editors influenced primarily to sell magazines.

A more useful number to potential engineering undergraduates aiming for industry, for instance, would be based on an investigation among engineering employers of the reputation of each school: this would be a metric that the vast majority of applicants would actually find useful.  Unfortunately, that's hard, because it would require journalists to do, you know, actual work rather than merely mailing their yearly survey to a few hundred colleges' PR offices and waiting for the response.

US News, along with the rest of the dinosaur media, has outlived its usefulness and can't die soon enough.

[Al DeFlorio]

[quote Kyle Rose][quote Al DeFlorio]Berkeley, UCLA, Illinois, and several other publics have a stronger faculty than Duke or Dartmouth or Brown.  Stronger than Penn, too.[/quote]
I have to imagine stronger than WUSTL or Northwestern, as well.
[/quote]
No question.  Stronger than all but a very few (and, in Berkeley's case, possibly stronger than all) of the twenty ranked ahead of them.  

Your "false precision" argument is dead on.  Making it worse is the "gaming of the system" going on at many schools aiming to climb in the rankings by manipulating the statistics.

[RatushnyFan]

I find it somewhat amusing that I was accepted to both Penn and U. Chicago and they were distant second and third choices for me.  I wouldn't change my decision over 15 years later (even if I hadn't met my future wife at Cornell, which I did!).  I'm sure others have similar stories.

[DeltaOne81]

[quote RatushnyFan]even though if I hadn't met my future wife at Cornell[/quote]

FYP **]

[RatushnyFan]

Thanks, but isn't that changing the meaning of what I was trying to say?  That said, I frequently need the grammar/diction nazis to step in and point me in the right direction.

[ugarte]

[quote RatushnyFan]Thanks, but isn't that changing the meaning of what I was trying to say?  That said, I frequently need the grammar/diction nazis to step in and point me in the right direction.[/quote]

It is a joke that Fred wrote after stepping out of a time machine that he used to visit 1952.

[DeltaOne81]

Yeah, it was a marriage joke. Pretty sure those are still in vogue in the 21st century :-P

Now might I just not be funny? ... That's entirely possible.

[RatushnyFan]

Now I get it, boy I'm slow today.  Jerseygirl distracted me.

[Jerseygirl]

[quote RatushnyFan]Now I get it, boy I'm slow today.  Jerseygirl distracted me.[/quote]

I tend to have that effect... ::innocent::