Link: Forbes: America's Best Colleges

[rhYno]

America's Best Colleges - Forbes.com

Alabama comes in ranked at Number 336, behind Vanderbilt (43), Florida (93), UGA (150), USCe (284), Ole Myth (295), and LSU (323).

 

[wisten]

Ah wel, we have the #1 football team and some of the purtiest girls to be found.

 

[RedStar]

Well, we all know that Forbes is the foremost authority on who the best school in the country is.


These lists just come out so people can debate them, and so schools like "Swarthmore College" have a reason to charge $50,000 per year. Funny how only 1 school that charges less than $30,000 per year made it in the top 100 (not including military academies.)

 

[RTR13]

I love when websites post the "best" blah blah blah, without telling you what it's based on.

 

[rhYno]

Ah wel, we have the #1 football team and some of the purtiest girls to be found.

And the number 1 college... in my heart at least!

 

[GreatDanish]

I love when websites post the "best" blah blah blah, without telling you what it's based on.

They do give a brief summary: "the staff at CCAP gathers data from a variety of sources. They use 11 factors in compiling these rankings, each of which falls into one of five general categories. First, they measure how much graduates succeed in their chosen professions after they leave school, evaluating the average salaries of graduates reported by Payscale.com (30%), the number of alumni listed in a Forbes/CCAP list of corporate officers (5%), and enrollment-adjusted entries in Who's Who in America (10%).
http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzz?publishe...best-colleges-10-intro.html?partner=yahoobuzz
Next they measure how satisfied students are with their college experience, examining freshman-to-sophomore retention rates (5%) and student evaluations of classes on the websites RateMyProfessors.com (17.5%) and MyPlan.com (5%). They look at how much debt students rack up over their college careers, considering the four-year debt load for a typical student borrower (12.5%), and the overall student loan default rate (5%). They evaluate how many students actually finish their degrees in four years, considering both the actual graduation rate (8.75%) and the gap between the average rate and a predicted rate, based on characteristics of the school (8.75%). "

I think the source for some of these stats is IPEDS - basically, the Federal Gov't Educational data reporting group.

I don't think I could ever make it clear my dislike for these rankings. I hate them.

 

[RTR13]

They do give a brief summary: "the staff at CCAP gathers data from a variety of sources. They use 11 factors in compiling these rankings, each of which falls into one of five general categories. First, they measure how much graduates succeed in their chosen professions after they leave school, evaluating the average salaries of graduates reported by Payscale.com (30%), the number of alumni listed in a Forbes/CCAP list of corporate officers (5%), and enrollment-adjusted entries in Who's Who in America (10%).

Next they measure how satisfied students are with their college experience, examining freshman-to-sophomore retention rates (5%) and student evaluations of classes on the websites RateMyProfessors.com (17.5%) and MyPlan.com (5%). They look at how much debt students rack up over their college careers, considering the four-year debt load for a typical student borrower (12.5%), and the overall student loan default rate (5%). They evaluate how many students actually finish their degrees in four years, considering both the actual graduation rate (8.75%) and the gap between the average rate and a predicted rate, based on characteristics of the school (8.75%). "

I think the source for some of these stats is IPEDS - basically, the Federal Gov't Educational data reporting group.

I don't think I could ever make it clear my dislike for these rankings. I hate them.

Shhhh.

 

[RTR91]

Well, we all know that Forbes is the foremost authority on who the best school in the country is.


These lists just come out so people can debate them, and so schools like "Swarthmore College" have a reason to charge $50,000 per year. Funny how only 1 school that charges less than $30,000 per year made it in the top 100 (not including military academies.)

I know college is outrageous, but you get what you pay for.

 

[RamJamHam]

I know college is outrageous, but you get what you pay for.

I have some experience with this. Some of the graduates of the "elite" law schools were certainly not any more prepared than was I for a master's-level program. I never will forget one of them being absolutely surprised that anybody from Alabama would even be there, much less 4 of us out of a class of about 140.

This is all somewhat a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why are Harvard and Yale Law grads the only ones (apparently) qualified to sit on the Supreme Court? Because they're from Harvard and Yale. What makes those schools better? They have the most sitting Supreme Court judges. And so on.

The fact is that, with a few exceptions, most jobs like that (legal, investment banking, governmental, etc.) are closed at the highest levels to all but the graduates of a few alleged elite schools. What you are paying for is the name on the transcript. Otherwise, how would you even start to compare the educational experience at College X as opposed College Y?

 

[Zorak]

The Barn comes in at 434. But I thought the education you got at Auburn was so much better than the education you got at Bama. Surely this list is a sham!

 

[Lou_Holtz]

We need to correct this.

At Alabama, we want a college that our football team can be proud of.

 

[RedStar]

Backlash building against college rankings - Business - Personal finance - msnbc.com

Maybe we should instigate a playoff. You know, to figure out who the real #1 is.

 

[TiderB]

The ranking lost all credibility with me when it had Carolina, Ole Miss, and LSU ahead of Alabama. I've never seen those schools ahead of Alabama in any ranking.

Not that I put too much stock in college rankings, but this is the one most people follow, and Alabama did quite well this year:

University of Alabama, Auburn rank in top 40 public universities | al.com