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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]https://www.wsj.com/rankings/college-rankings/best-colleges-2025
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/college-rankings/best-colleges-2024

I have to say, I find it hard to believe in the credibility of a ranking that can have a school in the top 10 one year and outside the top 100 the next. Amherst College: #8 to #120.[/quote]

I recovered my Wall Streef Journal account and figured out why this list is so weird:

- It’s been a bad summer for web traffic and ad sales. A weird list that generates angry traffic beats a good list that gets fewer views.

- Roughly half of the results are based on a *student survey*, even when the team was creating statistics on what seem like factors that should be based on hard, common data set data or alumni surveys. Example: learning opportunities and learning opportunities. The “character building” factor seems to be based on a proprietary set of survey questions that isn’t available online, or at least was hard to find online.

- Some of the more concrete numbers were calculated in unusual ways. Example: 94% of Washington University undergraduates get their bachelor’s degrees within six years, but it got a 71 on that indicator in the WSJ rankings. That’s because the team adjusted the graduation rate to adjust for the test scores of  the freshman and the percentage of freshman with household income over $110,000 per year. So, due to the adjustments, that indicator punishes schools with a lot of high-income-family students with high test scores, even though going to a school with smart rich kids might generally be considered a good thing. MIT gets dinged hard on that factor for the same reason. [/quote]

These descriptions continue to get crazier and crazier - is THIS is how college rankings have always been created? If so, my god.[/quote]

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