A New Ranking for Colleges and Universities

Yes, we are all well aware of the rankings put out by U.S. News every year for the "best" colleges and universities in the country, but what are those ranked on anyways? According to U.S. News, "data on up to 15 indicators of academic quality are gathered from each school and tabulated." So, these aren't necessarily the "best" schools if one was interested in becoming an engineer, or if one wanted a school with the nicest campus or most intriguing professors?

These types of rankings are pretty tough to find, but with a little effort on a search engine, they're certainly available. One that particularly piqued my interest was a ranking created by Forbes that derived a college ranking list from several categories. The breakdown provided with the rankings goes as follows:

25% from 4 million student evaluations of courses and professors (RateMyProfessor.com)

25% from post-grad success (Who's Who in America and Payscale.com)

20% from estimated student debt after 4 years

17% from the 4 year graduation rate

13% from the number of students and professors who have won Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes

Yes, one could make a case that a lot of the ranking could be skewed, but it would all depend on what one was looking for in a ranking of colleges. If these categories were acceptable, then I would say it is an invaluable list for a high school student looking for what college to attend. If not, then take the ranking with a grain of salt and enjoy what the Forbes machine spit out.

Forbes College Rankings 2009

Interesting to note:

Ivy League: #2 Princeton, #5 Harvard, #9 Yale, #13 Columbia, #72 Brown, #83 UPenn, #98 Dartmouth, #105 Cornell

Evan Kendall

INeedAPencil Associate

Sharon High School 2010 (Sharon, MA)