College rankings are good for selling magazines and college guide books, but are they good for students? Most likely not. “No current ranking system of colleges and universities directly measures the most critical point—student performance and learning,” said former Secretary of Eduction Margaret Spellings. Not only are the various criteria for rankings debatable, they often do little to help students understand what kinds of programs are compatible with their learning styles, interests, social lives and financial needs.

Each Ranking Has Bias
There is no numerical value that can describe a college. So reviewers have to invent various types of criteria that can be quantified. Some of these criteria are fairly straight forward: tuition, acceptance rate, teacher to student ratio. Firstly, how much these factors impact the student experience is debatable, and the weight each criterion is given is subjective. Secondly, there are kinds of criteria that must be gathered from answers that are themselves subjective.

U.S. News values the number of full-time professors, financial resources, graduate performance, and alumni giving. While this is valid data, it is also favors colleges that have big endowments and wealthy student bodies. On the other hand, Forbes claims to rank colleges from the student’s perspective. This leads to a bias towards schools where students’ values cohere closely with those of the college. While this is not a bad thing, neither is ideological diversity. Just because students see faults in their college or have disagreements with the administration doesn’t mean that they are receiving a poor education.

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The results are in, and Williams College has been ranked the number one college in America by Forbes. Each ranking system uses different criteria to determine the top colleges, and Forbes attempts to rank the best schools from the student’s point of view. “Students have varying tastes, preferences, academic abilities and financial situations, so the ‘best’ school for each student depends not only on overall quality as measured by rankings such as this one, but other considerations specific to individual students,” they explain.

Here is what Forbes consider the most important criteria:

• Do students enjoy their classes and overall academic experience?
• Do graduates succeed well in their occupations after college?
• Do most students graduate in a timely fashion, typically four years?
• Do students incur massive debts while in schools?
• Do students succeed in distinguishing themselves academically?

Here are the top ten results:

1. Williams College

2. Princeton University

3. Amherst College Read the rest of this entry »

To be named on one of The Princeton Review lists is usually a boon to colleges and universities, but this one may not be. The 2011 list of biggest party schools is out, and a spot of the list is decidedly a mixed blessing in the eyes of administrators. Although students may be attracted to the social life promised by a big party school, the reputation may have negative connotations for a university’s prestige as an institution of higher learning. The University of Georgia heads the list, followed by Ohio University, which also ranked on the “Lots of Beer” and “Lots of Hard Liquor” lists.

The schools are ranked based on surveys of the popularity of the Greek system, the use of drugs and alcohol and the number of hours students spend studying.

Here’s the top ten list:

1. University of Georgia

2. Ohio University

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Applying to college can seem like such a daunting and overwhelming task that many students don’t fully consider which school is really right for them. Students often obsess over getting into the “top school,” without finding out if that university or college has an academic and social environment that will suit them. College is Yours, in 600 Words or Less by Patrick O’Connor is the college guide that will help students find the college where they will actually be happy. Read the rest of this entry »

GreenReportCard.org just released its annual report card for how sustainable college campuses are. They compared the greenness of 332 schools. No one received a solid A, while 26 scored an A-, and about half the schools received at least a B-. More than half the schools received a higher grade than they had in previous reports, showing forward momentum on the part of colleges to become more sustainable, with 13 percent receiving a lesser grade.

GreenReportCard.org grades the colleges on the following criteria:

• Administration
• Climate change and energy
• Food and recycling
• Green buildings
• Student involvement
• Transportation
• Endowment transparency
• Investment priorities
• Shareholder engagement

The 26 Overall College Sustainability Leaders, or the Greenest Colleges, all scoring an A-, are:

Amherst College

Arizona State University

Brown University

University of California – San Diego

Carleton College Read the rest of this entry »

Every two years, Forbes takes a look at the business schools in the U.S. and determines which stand ahead of the competition. For students pursuing an MBA, this means narrowing in on the programs that will most likely provide them with a top-notch education and land them in their dream jobs.

Forbes took a look at the return on investment five years after graduation (so for this list, 2004 graduates), and spoke with 17,000 business school alumni from 103 schools to gather its information.

For 2009, Stanford Graduate School of Business rose to the top of the list, and was named the best business school in America by Forbes. The median salary for these Stanford graduates five years later is $225,000, surpassing all other business school graduate salaries.

The rest of the top 10 looks like this: Read the rest of this entry »

Browse the library or the Internet, and you’ll find dozens of “best college” rankings lists. But where do you find information about the worst colleges?  Radar Magazine provides an annual list of the Worst Colleges in America.  Keep in mind that these rankings are pretty subjective — but hey, aren’t all college rankings?

They explain the research behind their list – “Our annual college survey is an exhaustive, semiscientific guide to the most substandard schools in America, incorporating statistics on academics, graduation rates, and student life from a diverse array of sources, including the Princeton Review, U.S. News & World Report, and the U.S. Department of Education.”

According to Radar Magazine, here are the worst colleges in America:

University of Bridgeport is America's Worst College.

The Worst College in America: University of Bridgeport

Worst of the Big Ten: Michigan State University

Worst Trust-Fund-Baby College: Bennington College

Worst Ivy League School: Cornell University

Worst Christian School: Liberty University

Worst Party School (tie): San Diego State University and California State University, Chico

Worst Military Academy: Virginia Military Institute

Worst Women’s School: Texas Woman’s University

The Princeton Review has completed its annual 2009 college rankings list–and this year, they’re ranking the top green schools in America.  While many schools have made strong efforts in recent years to recycle, reuse, and become more sustainable, these are schools who have made sustainability a major mission of everyday life at the school.  Here’s their Green Rating Honor Roll (in alphabetical order):

1. Arizona State University
2. Bates College
3. College of the Atlantic
4. Emory University
5. Georgia Institute of Technology
6. Harvard College
7. SUNY Binghamton
8. University of New Hampshire
9. University of Oregon
10. University of Washington
11. Yale University

One particularly noteworthy college on this list: the funky College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.  This truly amazing school only has about 300 students, and all of them study human ecology.  The school is a child of the environmental movement, and students not only study about sustainable lifestyles–they live one.  This net-zero carbon emissions campus even grows much of its own organic food for the cafeteria, and assists other campuses at becoming more green.  If you’re really interested in environmental issues (and don’t mind going to school on a stunningly beautiful, but isolated island), this might be the place for you!

One impressively green college that The Princeton Review overlooked: Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Among other things, this progressive campus receives a good deal of its energy from wind power.

Hooray for The Princeton Review for creating this progressive ranking!

So U.S. News and World Report comes up with an annual list of the top schools in the United States.  And the top 20 list is just full of schools you’d never expect to find there–NOT! Here’s the 2008 list of top 10 schools as according to U.S. News and World Report:

1. Princeton University
2. Harvard University
3. Yale University
4. Stanford University
5. University of Pennsylvania
6. California Institute of Technology
7. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
8. Duke University
9. Columbia University
10. University of Chicago

So if I sound a little sarcastic, it’s not because I don’t put any stock whatsoever in school rankings.  When you’re choosing a college, it’s important to get as much information as you can about the quality of a school–and rankings are a solid piece of data.  And I’d be naive if I didn’t believe that the reputation of the school a student attends isn’t helpful, at least to some degree.

But the thing is, rankings aren’t everything–especially when you’re talking about an undergraduate education.  Too many students roll their eyes when their guidance counselors proclaim, “It’s not about the name of the school.  It’s about finding a school that fits you personally.”

Students, you’ve got to look past the name and spend some time figuring out what you really want from a college education.  Personal attention?  A particular major? An opportunity to do research with professors?  An urban college campus?  A political college campus?  Figure out what you want, and then find colleges that fit your needs.  If some of them are big name schools, terrific–but maybe they won’t be.  And that’s okay.

Curious about the top high schools in America? See this report from Newsweek.