Reply to Thoughts on Bates or Colby and Bates v. Colby?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'd say they are about the same. Colby is #18 (tied with Colgate and Smith) US News Liberal Arts Colleges, Bates is #22. For comparison - Williams #1, Pomona #4, Vassar #10, Wesleyan #17, Oberlin #26, Bucknell and Kenyon tied for #32, Sewanee #36, Dickinson, Gettysburg and Franklin and Marshall tied for #46, Denison #49.

[b]Not that I think these rankings are the end-all and be-all, but they give you an idea of how the schools are regarded by businesses and grad school (since there are a fair number in this area that don't seem to know much about liberal arts colleges).[/quote][/b]

[b]It's shocking when you consider for a moment that an also-ran, number 3-position weekly news magazine that used to be known as "Useless News & World Distort" (do they even publish anymore?) now exerts such influence over college adminstrators, applicants and parents.[/b][/quote]

See bold above. It's a guideline. Other rankings are quite similar. [/quote]

US News is the best known, but it and other surveys are not simply a guideline.  Colleges and universities have become obsessed with them, because they seem to drive application numbers, yield, faculty recruiting, even donations.  I know someone who insisted that his kid go to a school that was ranked #14 LAC over one that was #16, even though the latter was the kid's preference!   It's come out that some schools have flat-out fabricated their reported stats to goose their rankings, and that may just be the tip of the iceberg.  Even universities that claim not to care about the US News rankings, do.  You can bet that Princeton and Harvard would be pretty upset if they fell below #1 or #2.  It's gone beyond crazy.[/quote]

Good points, but when I said guideline I was referring to how the average student might use it. There's too much change from year to year to choose a #14 school from a #16 school to select a college on USNews rankings. Colby, for example, went from #22 in 2011 to #18 in 2012. It used to be tied with Bates at #22 if memory serves. Does that mean Colby is better than Bates? I don't think so. Are top 25 schools of a different caliber than the schools ranked around 40 and above though? I'd say that they are without a doubt. So that was what I meant by guideline. [/quote]

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