College Rankings: the right way to rank

When most people (and colleges) reference a college's "ranking," they're typically referring to U.S. News & World Report rankings that have been running steady since 1983 and have helped to transform a once moderate admissions process into one that's far more competitive and stressful, both for colleges and applicants. But that's old news on an old topic I've written about before.

I want to share with you a few other means of ranking colleges that will hopefully help some applicants prioritize their lists and get a better picture of the school that fits their priorities. Take these sources of information loosely, as studies like the Wall Street Journal and Ph.D. study have pretty small data sizes and the difference between 4th and 12th place might be less than a 5% difference. The general idea is that even making it on these rankings should be impressive.

The Wall Street Journal "Top 50 Feeder Schools" is a list of colleges that send the highest percentage of graduates to Ivy League and other top law, business, and medical graduate schools. I like that the list includes liberal arts colleges and gives you a good picture of how successful very small colleges are at producing successful graduates. Most of the rankings are as you would expect; Harvard, Yale, and Princeton take the top three, but there are some small colleges like Williams (5) and Pomona (13) that also prove that they have a formidable reputation in graduate school's eyes. I think this is a great reminder to go to the school that fits you best, even if it is a tiny liberal arts college that no one has heard of, and a testament to the idea that names don't always mean everything.

Another metric I like to use is the percentage of graduates who go on to get a Ph.D. Again, merely making the list is a really impressive indicator of academic excellence. These rankings are nice in that you can look up individual departments to see what schools have strong programs for a given major. Especially for those of you looking to go onto non-professional graduate school, to something like English or Physics, these rankings would be a great source to reference even if not for a Ph.D. Another trend that has helped me a lot is that this figure tends to be associated with how intellectual or nerdy a college environment is, so there is definitely a lot to work with out of this study.

The Forbes magazine rankings "America's Best Colleges" uses a similar approach to U.S. News & World Report but uses slightly different weighting and factors that make these rankings more about value and educational quality versus U.S. News's emphasis on endowment and reputation. They based 25 percent of their rankings on seven million student evaluations of courses and instructors, as recorded on the web site RateMyProfessors.com. Another 25 percent depended upon how many of the school’s alumni, adjusted for enrollment, are listed among the notable people in Who’s Who in America. The other half of the ranking was based equally on three factors: the average amount of student debt at graduation held by those who borrowed; the percentage of students graduating in four years; and the number of students or faculty, adjusted for size, who have won nationally competitive awards like Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes.

Rankings are never a sole criterion on which to choose a certain school over another, but these metrics are really user friendly and have done a lot of the deciding work for you; take advantage of them!

P.S. Try making your own ranking at StudentsReview that's customized based on what matters to you. Additionally, the Princeton Review allows you to look up colleges you're already interested in to see where they ranked on the publication's most recent lists such as "best campus dining" or "students study the most."

Great College Lists and Profiles from Allen Grove

August 11, 2010

Allen Grove of About.com runs a great college admissions blog for About.com that I consider to be top tier, along with Jacques Steinberg's New York Times Education blog: The Choice. One of the best features on Allen Grove's site is the "starter lists" he makes akin to the "best and worst" lists the Princeton Review's college guides are famous for. I find these lists really useful when sorting between the over two thousand four year undergraduate programs in the country; Grove brings lesser-known colleges really worth considering to life in his short lists and convenient descriptions. Furthermore, Grove has an unbelievable grasp of the American higher education system as a whole and offers great application and admissions advice.

20 Most Selective Colleges
Ivy League Schools
Top Catholic Colleges and Universities
Top Liberal Arts Colleges and 20 More Great Liberal Arts Colleges
Top Public Liberal Arts Colleges
Top Public Universities
Top Undergraduate Business Schools
Top Undergraduate Engineering Universities  and Top Engineering Colleges
Top Universities and 10 More Great Universities
Top Women's Colleges

Also of note are Groves's lists of "top picks by state" which break down great schools by geography. I hope you Illinoisians will appreciate the "Top Illinois Colleges" page!

The Common Application is live, Class of 2011!

The Common Application went up on August 1st, 2010 for the High School class of 2011 who will be entering college in the fall of 2011. Don't tell me you haven't been waiting all summer for this moment... maybe just me! In any case, the Common App is now legitimate, so you can add the schools you're interested in applying to, get all of the address/family/education background questions out of the way, and find out the fees and supplemental applications associated with each college. If you haven't done so, register for an account now so that you can start taking advantage of the resources the Common App makes available, even though most applications aren't due until November (early programs) or January (regular decision).

As far as opportunities to get started on your essays before school starts, this is the time to start! I would recommend that everyone work on the required Common App "pesonal essay" first, and then go on to school specific supplemental essays, which are unique to each college and will only be read by that particular school.

This year's Common App essay choices are as follows:

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.
Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.
A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
Topic of your choice.

Stay posted for advice on writing and revising your essays. I have attended three workshops on writing the college application essay and will be sure to fill you all in! I'll also be reviewing the book 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays, Third Edition: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get into the College of Your Choice (Harvard Crimson). For now, here is a great exercise to get started.

The Ideas Exercise - Facing a blank Word document with a blinking cursor taunting you? Don't know what to write about in your essays? This exercise is designed to get your mind loosened up to writing freely. It should preferably be performed with paper and pen, but it can also be done on a computer word processor. Set aside ten minutes of time at a desk in a quiet area with no distractions, and simply begin writing. Here's the only rule: never, never stop writing. Even if you run out of things to write (or type) about, simply write "I have nothing to write about. I have nothing to write about." Before long, you will notice that you "have something to write about... this one time..." and so the exercise goes. Simply getting those ideas out on paper shows you after a few brainstorming sessions, which things you naturally think about in the world. Do you write mostly about your past experiences, about other people, about places in your future, or about the meaning of life? That's the gist to capture in your essay first and foremost: your approach to the world and the way you really think. (Exercise courtesy of a writing workshop I attended at Harvard.)

In addition, here's a great resource on the application process in general that also addresses the common apps and shows a few strong sample essays for you to get an idea of what is expected: Allen Grove's article on the Common Application (About.com - college apps).