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What High School Students Really Think of the Rankings
Tweet Share on Facebook October 2, 2007 Comment (2)U.S. News and our chief critic, Lloyd Thacker of the Education Conservancy, apparently now agree on at least one thing that is very important: The U.S. News college rankings aren't what high school students are focusing on or worried about when they are going through the college application process.
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Measuring Economic Diversity at American Colleges
Tweet Share on Facebook September 18, 2007 Comment (1)Economic diversity has received growing attention in higher education, particularly at elite schools that haven't traditionally enrolled large numbers of low-income students or students from low-income families. It's also argued by many that colleges and universities should make a much better effort to educate students from low-income families, given higher education's role in social mobility.
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Correcting One of Our Critics
Tweet Share on Facebook September 14, 2007 Comment (3)Columbia College (Illinois) President Warrick Carter is wrong when he implies in recent letters to the Chicago Daily Herald and the Chicago Tribune that U.S. News ranked Columbia College in the recently published 2008 edition of America's Best Colleges. In fact, the exact opposite is the truth. Columbia College was very clearly listed among the "Unranked Schools" in the Universities Master's-Midwest category.
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The Top Liberal Arts Colleges Weigh In
Tweet Share on Facebook September 10, 2007 CommentA group of 19 college presidents representing many of U.S. News's top-ranked liberal arts colleges came out with their own "President's Statement on College Rankings" on Friday that was to be posted on all their schools' websites.
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Colleges That 'B Students' Should Consider
Tweet Share on Facebook September 7, 2007 Comment (6)What do you do if you are a high school student with less-than-dazzling grades and SAT/ACT scores and you still want to go to a very good school? U.S. News has an answer, and it's not looking at the main rankings. You should instead head to the exclusive list of "A-plus Options for B Students" for quality colleges that accept a significant number of applicants in the average-to-above-average range.
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Eight Programs That Enhance Learning
Tweet Share on Facebook September 4, 2007 Comment (3)If you are looking for schools that have some unique academic programs and also provide an especially rich academic environment on campus, then you may want to visit the Programs to Look For page in the free section of our website.
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On Pell Grants and Performance
Tweet Share on Facebook August 28, 2007 Comment (1)Since 1997, U.S. News has published a measure called "graduation rate performance." It's a way to acknowledge that some colleges and universities are doing a better job than expected in graduating their students. It counts for 5 percent of the total model for the National Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges rankings.
For the 2008 edition of America's Best Colleges, we added the percentage of Pell grant recipients as part of this computation. One of the criticisms about our rankings had been that our system didn't encourage schools to take low-income, at-risk students and that the only way to do well in the rankings is to buy students with high SAT/ACT scores through merit scholarships. Many colleges and universities have the mission of educating high percentages of students who are from low-income families, who tend to have lower graduation rates than non-Pell grant students. By including Pell grant data in the graduation rate performance calculation, schools (with high Pell grant percentages) will now get credit in our methodology for educating their low-income students because they will now do better in the graduation rate performance indicator than they did before we made this change.
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An Answer for Gustavus Adolphus College
Tweet Share on Facebook August 23, 2007 Comment (81)A new group of colleges was added to the list of unranked schools for America's Best Colleges 2008. It now includes those institutions that have indicated that they don't use the SAT or ACT in admission decisions for first-time, first-year, degree-seeking applicants.
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About Those Articles in the Times, Chronicle, and Inside Higher Ed. . .
Tweet Share on Facebook August 20, 2007 Comment (3)The 2008 edition of the America's Best Colleges rankings has been public since Aug. 17, 2007. Here are some comments about a few of the numerous articles written about the rankings.
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How We Check the Rankings Data
Tweet Share on Facebook August 14, 2007 CommentThe new America's Best Colleges 2008 edition rankings go live on August 17. What does U.S. News do to ensure the integrity of the data that we publish in the rankings?
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