Another week and another set of college rankings-must be back to school time. This week PayScale released its College Salary Report. As far as rankings go, it has several features to recommend it. The primary advantage is that it really is exclusively focused on outcomes. No national reputation score, no attempts to measure the qualities of the students. It’s strictly based on income of graduates.
College Rankings
50-50 Highlights: 28 Colleges with the Best ROI That You Can Actually Get Into
Money’s Best Colleges is one of the increasing alternatives to US News Best College Rankings. According to Washington Post, “Money Magazine’s new college rankings finally get it right for students” since it focuses on the cost to the student and likely return on investment. I’m not willing to declare Money’s College Rankings as the way rankings should be done, but I will acknowledge that it’s a step in the right direction.
Money or US News College Rankings: Which Should You Buy?
It’s that time of year again. Money Magazine recently released its listing of Best Colleges marking the beginning to fall college ranking season. The difference between the rankings this year is that students and families will have the option to pay for two of the rankings: Money and US News Best Colleges. The question is, should they?
Does Getting An Ivy League Education Mean That You Belittle Those Who Choose Not To?
Curses on you Google Alerts! I managed to go over two years without paying any attention to the Ivy Coach blog. But last Friday while going through my weekly Google alerts for information on college admissions, I managed to click on links related to The Ivy Coach twice!
Student to Faculty Ratios: Should they be part of your college rankings?
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is less definitive and has to do with why Student to Faculty ratios are important and if they are always important. In other words, it depends. Fun, fun, fun.
If you just want to go with the short answer, take a peek at the graph below.
What the Super Bowl Can Tell Us About College Rankings
In case you haven’t heard, the Super Bowl is this coming Sunday. Sometime during the ridiculously overdone coverage, viewers will see the starters from each team announcing their alma maters. And this has got me thinking. Here you have the two best teams in a championship game based on wins and losses with rosters of players from colleges ranked on wins and losses. Maybe, just maybe, the Super Bowl has something to teach us about rankings including US News College Rankings.
415 Colleges with at least 50% Acceptance Rates and 50% Graduation Rates
I’ve finally finished updating my list of 50-50 colleges. There’s nothing sophisticated about the 50-50 list, it’s simply a list of all colleges and universities that accept at least 50% of students and have at least a 50% graduation rate. That means that these are schools most students could get into and have a good chance of graduating as well.
6 Options for Public Liberal Arts Colleges
Liberal Arts Colleges are known for their focus on undergraduate teaching. They’re generally small with few or no graduate students and rank high in student engagement in research, internships, and culminating senior experiences. They can be very good for preparing students for graduate school. And they’re overwhelmingly private institutions.
Moneyball College Admissions Rules: Ignore Peer Pressure
I’m always amazed at the absolute certainty people have of the superiority of one college over another. Spend a little time on College Confidential and you’ll see high school students looking for advice on which school to attend bombarded with definitive statements of the overwhelming excellence of one school compared to another. Sometimes they’ll point to rankings but more often than not, the opinions will be based on their experience with just one of the schools in question.
