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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I remember reading a criticism of US News' ranking racket in The Atlantic a while back. The gist of it is it's a baseless scam that is manipulated by often false self-reported data.

[quote]It’s probably a sign of my own cynicism that I believe this last point is the key to the ridiculous popularity of the U.S. News rankings and those put out by other organizations like Kaplan, Fiske, or the Princeton Review. Dupes fork over their hard-earned money for the rankings to see how their kid (and, thus, they themselves!) stack up against the kid down the street. Ha! Sweetie, did you see that Bowdoin is ranked 20 spots higher than Oberlin?! Ah, the smug satisfaction and inner glow that come from having bested the Joneses. No matter how ludicrous that “besting” is.

But surely there is something good to be said about the U.S. News rankings? Yes. For parents and prospective students who know almost nothing about America’s colleges and universities, the ranking provides a rough guide to the institutional landscape of American higher education. Using the U.S. News rankings for any more exacting purpose is about as good for you as eating potato chips and Gummy Bears for dinner. With maple syrup.

So, my best advice is simply to ignore the U.S. News rankings. If you want to find rankings of American colleges and universities that are far more nourishing and beneficial, look at the ones produced by The Washington Monthly.
[/quote]
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/your-annual-reminder-to-ignore-the-em-us-news-world-report-em-college-rankings/279103/[/quote]

But that article is from 2013 and they've completely revamped the methodology this year.  So there may be criticisms of the rankings, but the Atlantic article is no longer accurate.[/quote]

Their points still seem valid. [/quote]

They're valid only if you didn't read the article and didn't notice that their criticism is of college rankings not high school rankings.  For example, one of their main critique was that US News put a heavy weighting on "reputational scores" of colleges by peers.   Reputational scores don't even exist for the high school rankings.  There are valid criticisms of the US news high school ranking methodology, but this article is not a good source.[/quote]

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