Methodology: College Choices by High School Counselors

For the second consecutive year, U.S. News counts guidance counselor opinions in ranking the National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges. There's little doubt that high school counselors often have a considerable amount of firsthand knowledge about colleges and universities in their regions, and the experience and expertise needed to assess academic quality and give prospective students smart direction. Over the years, high school guidance counselors have asked many times that U.S. News take account of their opinions in preparing the Best Colleges rankings. We've listened. 

This means that in the 2012 edition of the Best Colleges rankings, public and private independent school counselor ratings are used as a separate indicator of academic reputation for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges in addition to the ratings by college admissions deans, provosts, and presidents.

The rating by high school guidance counselors are weighted 7.5 percent in the National Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges rankings. The separate peer assessment rating factor of academic reputation by college admissions deans, provosts, and presidents is weighted 15 percent in the rankings of the National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges. Both sets of weights are unchanged from the 2011 Best Colleges rankings. 

[Read more about the category weights used in the 2012 Best Colleges rankings.]

The high school counselors we asked to participate were from the 1,787 public high schools nationwide in 48 states and the District of Columbia that made the 2010 U.S.News & World Report's Best High Schools rankings, which were published in December 2009. In addition, this year we also included approximately 600 additional counselors in the survey's sample from the largest private independent high schools in each state. There were approximately 2,400 public and private high school counselors surveyed in spring 2011. 

The entire sample was divided in half and each state's high school counselors surveyed were also divided in half. That meant that approximately 1,200 counselors nationwide were sent a survey to rate the colleges in the National Universities category and another 1,200 high school counselors nationwide were sent a survey to rate the colleges in the National Liberal Arts Colleges category. The result of this process was that the sample was both balanced geographically nationwide and evenly distributed by state. 

We asked the high school counselors to take into account the insights they use to direct students to particular colleges in addition to their knowledge about these schools in general. Also, we asked them to consider what they know about each college's academic record, curriculum, faculty, programs, and graduates. The counselors rated the quality of a school's undergraduate academic programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Those who didn't know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark "don't know." 

Scores for each school were totaled and divided by the number of counselors who rated that school, and then they were ranked in descending order based on the average high school counselor reputation score. Schools receiving the same rank and average reputation score are tied.

Of those who received the High School Counselor National Universities survey and the High School Counselor National Liberal Arts Colleges survey, 13.4 percent responded. These results were incorporated into the Best Colleges rankings methodology for the 2012 edition. Synovate, an opinion-research firm based in Chicago, collected the data.