Forbes college rankings

[Anonymous]

My son attends a very prestigious school, no bashing so I am not naming it His advisor said their entire college guidance staff relies more heavily (for what they are worth) on the Forbes rankings over US News. I personally don't generally pay much attention in general but I found that interesting and was wondering what say you?

Some schools he is considering applying to stack up quite differently which I found interesting. My husband half jokingly told him he can apply to any school in the top 100. What do you think about the list? Is it worth paying much attention to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son attends a very prestigious school, no bashing so I am not naming it

You are a terrible person for sending your kid there. Doesn't matter where it is, your very presence on this forum makes me sick.

Just kidding.

[Anonymous]

Forbes and US News are very different lists. Forbes favors undergraduate teaching and SLACs. The first public school that isn't a service academy (which have a very strong focus on undergraduate teaching) is Berkeley at 37. Then comes UVA and W&M, again because both have strong emphasis on teaching.

So it depends on what you care about. US News is mostly reputation based, it tries to measure how impressive your degree is. Forbes is a best used as a measure of undergraduate teaching. Times heavily focuses on research. Take your pick on which one you want to listen to based on what YOU care about.

[Anonymous]

OK that is good to know. I found it noteworthy that this group of advisors all favors and "goes by" the Forbes list over US News. Of course not that either would make or break a decision

[Anonymous]

There are certain similarities between small private schools and small liberal arts schools. It's not really that shocking that they favor Forbes.

[Anonymous]

I think linkedin has the best methodology.

They're new in the ranking game but they use exit data into industry which is the most useful for students.

I.E. if I was a senior looking back, I would just go onto linkedin and search which institutions have the most alums in industries or firms I want to work for and then compile my own list that way.