#21 in Forbes Magazine's Best Colleges
Forbes Magazine would like to offer American kids an alternative to the U.S. News & World Report 's annual college rankings.
I'm not sure what actually distinguishes this "Best Colleges" list from the other one, aside from a somewhat vague commitment to parsing schools based on the "the quality of the education they provide, and how much their students achieve," but Wesleyan is #21 overall, between Pomona and Haverford. Make of that what you will.
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Forbes ranks universities and liberal arts colleges together on its list and places heavy emphasis on such somewhat fluffy factors as the number of alumni listed in "Who's Who in America" and the quality of teacher ratings on Ratemyprofessors.com (25% each), as well as more conventional factors as graduation rates, average student debt, and endowment values.
This is probably at least partially why Wesleyan is ranked significantly higher than half the Ivies. Not that we're complaining.
Forbes Magazine: America's Best Colleges
19 comments:
http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/13/college-university-rankings-oped-college08-cx_rv_mn_0813intro.html
the methodology is discussed here.
It's nice to see wesleyan up there but any of these rankings are pretty dumb
"Another 25% depends on how many of the school's alumni, adjusted for enrollment, are listed among the notable people in Who's Who in America."
HA
As ridiculous as college rankings are (and as ridiculous as the methodology is for this one) it's an interesting ranking. And it is nice to see Wes coming in relatively high on it. Name recognition is a good thing.
True, but the whole point of the methodology seems to be to try to debunk the effect that name recognition has on the other rankings.
25% from rankings on ratemyprofessors.com? Clearly, someone is confused about how statistics work. This is totally embarrassing.
whoop-dee-fuckin-doo
I think its more important to compare this flawed system to the obviously flawed system of US News. US News factors in endowment, how much money alumni give, selectivity etc. all of which are almost completely unimportant when in comes to the quality of a college and frankly have a lot more to do with reputation.
In the Forbes rankings, a quarter of a school's rank is judged by what people write on ratemyprofessors.com. Instant credibility drop.
I'm surprised the Forbes editors let this piece run. It's a joke.
@ anon 3:26
I agree, US News has a poor system for comparing schools. Especially since some schools (like Wesleyan) develop policies to directly influence their score. But Forbes isn't offering a decent alternative, which only serves to make US News look more authoritative.
I think that while the ratemyprof.com aspect is not authoritative, the other factors they take into account are intelligent and make schools like dartmouth and georgetown that are floating by on their name actually own up to what their graduates are doing after school or are not doing in some cases.
It is also worth noting that all the Forbeses went to Princeton.
What we over at the House don't understand is, given that UChicago has so many Nobel Laureates and Rhodes Scholars, how the hell did it end up so low on the rankings. The rankings confuse the hell out of us and amuse the hell out of us. Also, how did Wabash beat all those other colleges based on their methodology. The only thing they could have beaten everyone on was Rate My Professor because so many other schools use internal ratings systems.
I'm waiting for someone to release rankings based on mascots and school colors.
brandi- for ranking mascots and colors... the purple and yellow might not hold up well, but purple cow may be top 10!
money/endowment/alumni giving does matter... it means better facilities , better compensated professors, generally smaller class sizes because of more money for more professors and likely a more economically diverse student body because of better financial aid. So its not a perfect measure of those things, but money does definitely help measure how good a school is--not do defend the absurdity of Forbes' or US News' rankings.
i agree that this is crap but i cant help but be excited that we beat brown.
That's what I was thinking 5:10. But then again I have never understood the whole rivalry between Wesleyan and Brown since they have so little in common.
they have similar types of people
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