Top Colleges
Students and their parents who are looking where to go for their degree in the university offering the top majors have resources available on hand online and offline which they can use to make an educated decision. Rankings of the best colleges are usually presented as simple lists of the top 10 or 20 best educational institutions in the country, and these are usually produced by various ranking institutions that rely on a certain set of criteria. Foremost publications that conduct college rankings include US News and World Report, Princeton Review, Ordo Lodus and Forbes.com.
Rankings of top colleges are not free of criticisms, however. Rankings for top colleges have been placed under scrutiny lately with people, most especially school administrators, starting to question the truthfulness and accuracy of these rankings and whether or not the publications undertaking these rankings are free of any bias.
How Are Top Colleges Ranked?
Top colleges are often ranked in various ways. However, common methods used include the overall perceived quality of education offered by the school through the results of empirical statistics or through a survey of educators, students and alumni of the respective colleges. Certain ranking publications rank US colleges using more unusual criteria. For example, Washington Monthly takes into account what top colleges are doing for the country by looking at programs designed to help lift people out of poverty and how well federal grants are used by the school when ranking top colleges.
The internet is now a powerful tool through which colleges can be compared. Some ranking companies provide more detailed information on top colleges through subscription-only sites. A method of ranking called the G-factor uses the internet to rank top colleges by looking at the number of Google hits a university web site gets or the number of link backs to a university home page.
Data Most Commonly Used in Ranking Top Colleges
Included in the data typically gathered when ranking top colleges are the following: SAT and ACT scores of incoming students, acceptance rate, alumni donations, graduation rates, the student-faculty ratio, class size and the credentials of the faculty. Another important factor used to rank colleges is survey results provided by students, alumni and school administrators.