It's that special time of year when involved parents everywhere rush out to buy the essentials: calculators, notebooks and the latest issue of US News and World Report. America's Best Colleges 2008 hit newsstands on Monday and no surprise...Princeton, Harvard, and Yale lead the pack with the usual suspects following suit. For about two decades, the magazine's been ranking schools based on criteria like graduation rates, SAT scores, and alumni gifts to determine which institutions deserve the top spots. To me, these rankings always seemed somewhat arbitrary considering they take a one-size-fits-all approach when there are countless different potential trajectories for incoming college students.
What if, for example, you're interested in pursuing, say... environmental studies? You have a knack for math and science and you're passionate to take on the complexities of climate change and conservation. In these times of Inconvenient Truths and 11th Hours, the old fashioned single publication ranking system is inadequate.
Grist agrees. Earlier this month, they beat US News to the punch by releasing their own Top 15 Green Colleges and Universities as a source for alternative information to those with an environmental objective in mind. College of the Atlantic ranks #1 and Harvard makes this list too at #6. Tufts University is #9, which anecdotally was a great start on my own path. And while you're on their website, check out other Green Top 15's including cars, actors, politicians and more.
Of course, The Princeton Review's 2008 Best College Rankings edition also just came out this week for students with extracurricular interests such as 'reefer madness', 'students ignore god on a regular basis' [paging Pharyngula], or 'Students Most Nostalgic for Ronald Reagan'. There are many unexpected categories, but as NBC has been telling us for years: the more you know, the better informed you are to make important decisions.
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Talk about a bad framing. Education shouldn't be so business focused. All rankings actually do is support the corporate marketing industry. I believe this is the best selling issue of US News all year.
In my opinion, university and college rankings give an overblown importance and prestige to each, and put an undo pressure on the applicants. So many hundreds of "not ranked" smaller schools can also be a rewarding and wonderful experience.
Yes Linda, but you know how this works. It sells magazines.
I was particularly fond of Newsweek's ratings this year. They produced a list of 'hot' schools. What the Sam Hill does that even mean? And how did they determine it? What a waste of page space.