Here Are America's Top Colleges for 2018
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Anonymous
| The top 50 are all amazing ... which is why ranking schools is dumb. |
Anonymous
Forbes is a business journal. They tend to factor in finances, ROI, name brand grad placements, etc. A private school with very little ROI for its tuition might not fare well under Forbes. A public school with a good ROI gets brownie points. Makes sense. |
Anonymous
Then how do you explain Williams, Amherst, Bowdown, Pomona etc. all in the top 20. And even Bates #29. |
Anonymous
Not sure of your question. If these grads do well after graduation, relative to the tuition, less F/A, grants, etc., their rankings would be relatively high. Of course, Forbes factor in the typical USNews ranking criteria such as academic rigor, etc. Check Forbes' methodology for a better picture. All the ranking games out there use different methodologies. Washington Monthly tends to be concerned with social justice issues, more so than Forbes. So, upward mobility of graduates is important to its ranking. I believe Sierra Club has its own ranking, the greenest college in the USA. Harvard, Yale, Princeton might not make its cut. |
Anonymous
| A bit confused about the cist. Is that cost for tuition only? |
Anonymous
| WHen does US News come out? |
Anonymous
I am guessing they factor in the tuition/fees as well as the schools' financial commitment to their students. Some schools are better than others in this regard. Ivies and SLACs invest heavily in this department, often making their cost less than public universities. |
Anonymous
It is tricky, because it mixes merit and need, and it isn't clear what the denominator is. |
Anonymous
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Forbes methodology explained https://www.forbes.com/sites/cartercoudriet/2018/08/20/top-colleges-2018-the-methodology/#55095eca3098
Alumni Salary (20%) To calculate a school’s salary score, we considered four data points: the school’s early career earnings (1-4 years after graduation) from PayScale, mid-career earnings (10-plus years) from PayScale, and the earnings of federal financial aid recipients six years and 10 years after starting college from College Scorecard. Because paying for college is a long-term investment, early career earnings accounted for only a third of our salary score, and later earnings two thirds. PayScale’s data made up 85% of the salary score and College Scorecard the remaining 15%. Debt (20%) We drew all of our debt data from College Scorecard. We got half of our debt score by multiplying the average federal student loan debt per borrower at each school by the percentage of students at the school who took out federal loans. The other half of our debt score came from two-year and three-year federal student loan default rates. Student Experience (20%) We assume that students who believe their college experience is worthwhile will remain in school. Therefore we drew most of our student experience score, 15% of our total score, from a school’s first-year-to-sophomore retention rate as recorded by IPEDS, averaging the rates for the most recent three years. We drew the remainder of our student experience score, 5% of our total, from Niche, which administers surveys to more than 90,000 students and alumni. We used their survey data that measured both professor quality and student life. Both use a GPA scale: An A for professor satisfaction would give a school a 4.00 grade, a B a 3.00, and so on. American Leaders List (15%) Along with alumni salary, we measure graduates’ success using a data set we compile ourselves, The American Leaders List, is a roster thousands of successful people and their alma maters. We use FORBES databases including the Forbes 400, the Richest Self-Made Women list, the Most Powerful Women list and 30 Under 30. We also count current leaders in public service: U.S. Supreme Court Justices, the President and his Cabinet, members of the U.S. Congress and state governors. In addition, we count winners of the following awards over the last one-to-four years based on the number of recipients for each: MacArthur Fellowship, Nobel Prize, Breakthrough Prize, Lasker Prize, Fields Prize, Academy Awards, Oscars, Tony’s, NAACP Awards, Guggenheim Fellowship, major sport all-stars, Presidential Medals and Pulitzer Prizes. We blended schools’ raw numbers of alumni leaders and its number of leaders adjusted for its number of undergraduates. Academic Success (12.5%) To further measure graduates’ success, we looked at academic achievements. We drew half of this score, 6.25% of our total score, by counting the number of academic awards won by alumni at each school for the past one-to-four years, depending on the number of recipients per year for each. We counted the Fulbright, Truman, Goldwater, Gates, Cambridge and Rhodes Scholarships and weighed them as a percentage of the undergraduate student body. We drew the second half of this category, or 6.25% of our total, from the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates. We used the three-year average number of Ph.D. recipients who spent their undergraduate careers at each institution. Both are calculated as a blend of schools’ raw numbers of award winners and of doctorates and those numbers adjusted for its number of undergraduates. Graduation Rate (12.5%) We gave credit to schools that motivate, guide and support students to graduate in a timely manner, saving on tuition and getting into the workforce as soon as possible. We divided our graduation rate calculation into three pieces. The largest is four-year graduation rate, which accounted for 7.5% of our total score. We used data from IPEDS and averaged the rate for the most recent three years. We used the same source and methodology to calculate six-year graduation rates, which counted for 2.5% of our overall score. And we use IPEDS data and the same methodology to count the graduation rates for Pell grant recipients, which accounted for 2.5% of our overall score. Pell grants go to economically disadvantaged students, and we believe schools deserve credit for supporting these students. FORBES Caveat: As noted in this post by Forbes contributor Martin Krislov, IPEDS’ graduation rate statistics only count full-time undergraduates enrolled in college for the first time, who finish their bachelor’s at the same institution where they started. |
Anonymous
| Where's UVa |
Anonymous
Well, you know Forbes is such a bastion of crazy leftist thought that it probably overrates Brown. Related note: U. of Chicago way down there at #18. |
Anonymous
Chicago below Georgetown? Nice! |
Anonymous
This is almost exactly what my father said over the weekend. My niece is a rising senior and swimmer. She is considering attending U. of Wisconsin and UNC (comparable swimming programs). We were discussing her options on family vacation over the weekend and my father, who is a college professor and a midwesterner, was very down on UNC despite the fact that its higher ranked. Wisc seems to have fallen in the rankings. I was wondering if its bc Gov. Walker has cut funding. |
Anonymous
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Universities:
1- Harvard 2- Yale 3- Stanford 4- MIT 5- Princeton 6- Caltech 7- UPenn 8- Brown 9- Dartmouth 10- Duke 11- Georgetown 12- Cornell 13- UC Berkeley 14- Columbia 15- UChicago 16- Northwestern 17- Notre Dame 18- UMichigan 19- Johns Hopkins 20- Rice 21- USC 22- Vanderbilt 23- Tufts 24- UVA 25- WashU LACs 1- Williams 2- Amherst 3- Bowdoin 4- Pomona 5- Harvey Mudd 6- Swarthmore 7- Claremont McKenna 8- Bates 9- Middlebury 10- Wesleyan 11- Haverford 12- Washington and Lee 13- Davidson 14- Wellesley 15- Colgate 16- Carleton 17- Vassar 18- Kenyon 19- Barnard 20- Lafayette Looks pretty reasonable to me... |
Anonymous
No. 5 (after Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, Military Institutions for Best Public Institutions). https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiananjappan/2018/08/21/top-25-public-colleges-2018/#f0139ad582ec |