Rankings and their Inherent Values

When I posted earlier on values and questioning what was important to you, I did this because choosing a college is a highly personal and subjective process. One person's reason for going to college X are going to be different from another's reasons. There may be some overlap, but the manner in which two people go about discovering colleges, figuring out what's important in the college they attend, and visiting the colleges will often times be different.

Given that the college search is a personal, subjective process, it stands to reason that college rankings, like those I posted about yesterday, should be used very carefully. Each of the ranking systems decides on a number of factors that they believe connote quality. When you look at these rankings, you should look at each of their factors and how much weight they give to them. Would you give the same weight? Or would you look at something completely different? What if you desparately want to go to a highly ranked school, but you disagree with the categories that a publication uses to determine their rankings? I am afraid that most students do not do enough homework when examining the rankings.

In that spirit, I think it is important to point the way towards doing one's homework. How many of us skip U.S. News and World Report's "Methodology" section to get to the actual numbers and ranks? Well, as you can see, I have linked to their methodology section for you to peruse. They give their full justifications as to why they think these factors are important and how much weight they give to them. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Next week: An alternative to traditional rankings