College Reviews
The importance of making an educated decision about where to get an education should never be downplayed. This is the reason why way before school season rolls around the corner and long before 'welcome to college' banners start popping up in university courtyards and community college campuses, most students are going online and combing meticulously through college reviews.
College reviews and rankings can help a student choose which school is best for him or her to go to. Most college rankings and reviews provide college comparisons of services, college prices or tuition fees, degrees offered, among other factors. Publications that provide college ratings are available in print-only versions or online depending on the institution making the rankings. Rankings are also not exclusive to Ivy League schools. Online universities are also rated by top college rankings sites according to the same criteria used to evaluate traditional schools.
Whether a student is looking for a college where he can get an undergraduate or vocational degree or an MBA, browsing through a collection of college rankings and reviews provided by satisfied alumni is one way to make a decision. Tuition fees are often one major consideration for most students, along with accessibility and degrees offered.
Are College Reviews Reliable?
There is a great debate in the academe on the reliability of college reviews. Some are saying that one should not rely on college reviews and go directly to the respective colleges instead for a more detailed first impression. Typical examples, like the Gunman Report, a print-only publication of college reviews, are being singled-out by most academicians for their apparent lack of solid ranking criteria for making college ratings. Even highly-ranked universities question the results of most college reviewers. Controversy surrounding the validity of the college reviews of popular publication US News when Stanford University President Gerhard Casper sent a letter to the publication and released "An Alternative to the US News and World Report College Survey."
In 1998, the Association of American Law Schools even moved to call for a termination of all college reviews and rankings, saying that the rankings provided by institutions like the US News were misleading and dangerous.