How We Do the Rankings
Just how can rankings help you identify colleges and universities that are right for you? Certainly, the college experience consists of a host of intangibles that cannot be reduced to mere numbers. But for families, the U.S. News rankings provide an excellent starting point because they offer the opportunity to judge the relative quality of institutions based on widely accepted indicators of excellence. You can compare different schools' numbers at a glance, and looking at unfamiliar schools that are ranked near schools you know can be a good way to broaden your search.
Of course, many factors other than those we measure will figure in your decision, including the feel of campus life, activities, sports, academic offerings, location, cost, and availability of financial aid. But if you combine the information in this book with college visits, interviews, and your own intuition, our rankings can be a powerful tool in your quest for college.
It's very important, of course, to research the course and program offerings at any school you're interested in. For the sixth consecutive year, U.S. News helps by spotlighting schools with outstanding examples of academic programs that have been shown to enhance learning. With the help of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which focuses on quality initiatives in higher education, we identified eight types of programs associated with student success, including first-year experiences, learning communities, writing in the disciplines, senior capstone, study abroad, internships or cooperative education, opportunities for undergraduate research, and service learning. We asked college presidents, chief academic officers, and admissions deans to nominate up to 10 institutions with excellent examples of each. The results are on the Academic Programs to Look For section of this website.
No ax to grind. The U.S. News rankings system rests on two pillars. It relies on quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality, and it's based on our nonpartisan view of what matters in education.
U.S. News has made numerous changes this year to improve our methodology and rankings. To sort colleges and universities into the appropriate categories, this 2008 edition of America's Best Colleges uses the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's recently announced 2006 Basic version of its Carnegie Classifications. This was the first major category revision by Carnegie since 2000 (we implemented those changes in the 2002 rankings). The latest revision has resulted in many schools changing from one U.S. News ranking category to another. In addition, some schools, including the U.S. service academies, are ranked for the very first time. The Carnegie Classifications have been the basis of the Best Colleges ranking categories since the first rankings in 1983 and also are used in higher-education research. For example, the U.S. Department of Education and many associations use them to organize their data and to determine colleges' eligibility for grant money. In short, the Carnegie categories are the accepted standard in higher education, and that is why we use them.
How will you be able to tell whether a school has changed ranking categories or is new to the rankings for 2008? We have clearly footnoted schools that have switched categories since last year's America's Best Colleges or that appear in our rankings for the first time.
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