# College Rankings **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 27, 2010, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609 "2010-08-27T01:07:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/21 "2010-08-28T03:27:25Z")
Without evident irony, all but one of the reputable liberal arts colleges in my state got Fs. My school, Really Fucking Huge State U, got a C. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/22 "2010-08-28T06:24:28Z")
Not only is that list crap, it’s bunk. For my _alma mater_, its note on the Composition requirement is incorrect. Same goes for the US Government or History requirement. The other notes are equally invalid. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/23 "2010-08-28T08:23:31Z")
Wow no Illinois school gets more than a “B” which is what my school got. No wonder I can’t get a job I want me a refund, I paid for an “A” school not do “B” school 😃 ---
**Author:** ![notsoheavyd3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/85e7bf/32.png) [@notsoheavyd3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notsoheavyd3)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/24 "2010-08-28T15:14:58Z")
I might as well chime in with the school I got my degree from. (Given how terrible they were they are not my alma mater, they don’t deserve the term.) Anyway old FU got a B. Lets see, they’re given credit for having a lit course but that’s not actually true. (They have no lit requirement. I had to check since they didn’t have one when I went there about 20 years ago and they still don’t have one.) Of course they do have the under grad torture requirement but I’ve mentioned that already. (It, like cake, is a lie.) Hmm, looks like they lessened up on the math requirement since I went there but they’re not getting credit anyway. I know I’ve said this before but I would think I most students would be better off with concerned, knowledgable faculty that use their experience to help students select the best courses for them to get the most out of their education.(Which pretty much gets you an F.) You know, versus say old FU which pretty much made it a point they didn’t care about their students and that they weren’t big on that old “undergrad education” thing and would have dumped it if they could. (But by god, they’ve got a piece of paper with hard and fast rules. Screw those stupid chump students if this only F’s them over.) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/25 "2010-08-28T16:23:34Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Not only is that list crap, it’s bunk. For my _alma mater_, its note on the Composition requirement is incorrect. Can you place out of that requirement? My alma mater is the same, but apparently (according to their ranking criteria) if you can test out of it, it doesn’t count. (Yet testing out of a foreign language is okay.) We also have a natural sciences distribution requirement, but I’m guessing it allows for courses that are “too narrow,” and thus gets rejected, too. We had a history distro, too, but it wasn’t specifically US History. So no dice for that. This is a decidedly odd ranking system. Aha…it looks like if you click on the school name, they tell you exactly why points were not counted for certain requirements. > [@](#): > > No credit given for Natural or Physical Science because the Natural Sciences requirement may be satisfied by courses in anthropology, geography, linguistics, and psychology. > [@](#): > > No credit given for Composition because the program evaluates students through freshman seminars offered in a range of disciplines rather than specific writing classes. Students are only required to take writing if their performance in these seminars is unsatisfactory. > [@](#): > > No credit given for Mathematics because the Formal Studies requirement may be fulfilled with courses on Slavic linguistics and music theory. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/26 "2010-08-28T16:50:11Z")
What school allows Slavic linguistics as a math substitute? ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/27 "2010-08-28T20:13:15Z")
My alma mater, a true blue dyed in the wool Liberal Arts School, got a C. Bullshit. ETA - My boyfriend went to the local shitty state university and got a fraction of the breadth of education I did, and it gets a B. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/28 "2010-08-29T03:11:03Z")
Okay, I’ll be the contararian tonight. Fom their FAQ: > [@](#): > > I’m confused. Are you saying that places like Midwestern State University and Brooklyn College, which get As, offer a better education than institutions like Cornell and Brown, which get Fs? > > In terms of their general education curricula, yes. Our report is not intended to offer a comprehensive assessment of all aspects of a university. That some of the best-known colleges earn poor marks for general education doesn’t mean that they don’t do other things well; it means that they are not demonstrating a commitment to a broad-based general education curriculum. > > Our grades do not place any value on prestige or reputation. Unique among the major college guides, our grades were developed based on applying objective criteria to institutions’ curricula. So they’re pretty clearly saying they’re not issuing a catch-all grade for the university; they’re just grading one aspect. Hence this: > [@Ravenman](#): > > Oh, come on, people! Everyone knows that students from Arizona State University (“B”) come out more smarterer than students at Harvard (“F”)! And those 30% of students who done graduated at Midwestern State University of Wichita Falls, TX (“A”) what done more book learning than those idjits at UC Berkeley (“F”)! > > Get a brain! Morans is missing the point. Of course the average Harvard grad is smarter than the average Midwestern State grad; they were miles and miles smarter before they went to college. You test golf schools by sending me and Tiger Woods to two different ones, and then seeing who produces the better golfer at the end… somehow I don’t think that’ll work. What they’re after is trying to assess the value added by the college, and factor out what kinds of kids go there to begin with – i.e. give higher marks to a school that takes in average or below average students and then gives them a rigorous curriculum instead of a school that takes in smart kids and then lets them take “Gynecology in the Ancient World” as their only history class, or “Introduction to Television” as their only course in the Humanities. > [@Munch](#): > > But that website only focuses on what is required, not what is taken or even offered. Well, if it’s required, then they _are_ focusing on what’s taken, no? Requirements are the only things you know a student will take. If you based it on what’s offered … well pretty much everyone gets an A. Generally, any courses you can get at Massive State U that aren’t available at Average-Sized U are going to be pretty specialized. > [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > Yeah, I think this is mostly bull. My alma mater gets a C, in part because they have no formal composition requirement. What the list _isn’t_ telling you is that virtually all students take a writing-intensive freshman seminar, which not only gives them at _least_ as much writing practice and feedback as the average, generic English 101 class, but teaches them to do real, content-based writing in their major. I am sure that students there are learning to be better writers than they are at the college where I currently teach (which gets a B, mostly because it’s got a fairly rigid, conventional checklist of gen-ed requirements). No they do say it. They define Composition as > [@](#): > > A college writing class focusing on grammar, style, clarity, and argument. These courses should be taught by instructors trained to evaluate and teach writing. “Across-the-curriculum” and “writing intensive” courses taught in disciplines other than English do not count if they constitute the only component of the writing requirement. You can disagree with that, but it is by no means some freaky position to take; opinions of the efficacy of across-the-curriculum are pretty mixed among people who study it. IMHO (as a former freshman comp teacher) across-the-curriculum can be fine, IF the prof is actually taking the time in the class to teach writing. But especially when you have, say, a History prof teaching the class, is that prof going to sit down with a kid and work on the kid’s inability to write a coherent paragraph? Maybe, maybe not. It certainly isn’t what that Historian’s main training is, or his main interest. It can easily end just be another history class with a few pointers about rhetoric thrown in. For kids who already write well, eh, no problem. But for kids who come to college reading and writing at well below college level (which is to say, most of them), that’s a deficiency that isn’t getting rectified. They’ll just go through four years of college getting marked down on papers, but still passing (assuming they do know the material) and graduating. It’s entirely possible to have a 500 verbal SAT, a 3.4 GPA, (which can get you into plenty of famous schools) … and an eighth-grade writing level. This is especially true for minorities. Telling that kid he doesn’t need to take a class focused writing with a trained writing teacher is, IMHO, a real disservice. > [@taffygirl](#): > > I’ve done some research, and I would take this website’s findings with a very large dose of salt. The website is the product of the American College of Trustees and Alumnae, a conservative group that was founded by Lynn Cheney and Joe Leiberman. The group seems to have very strong and definite ideas–OK, a bias–as to what should and shouldn’t be required by US colleges and universities. I’m not saying all their ideas are mistaken, just that this is not an objective evaluation of colleges and universities on a broad range of unbiased criteria. Think of it along the same lines as if Fox News put together such rankings, or The Huffington Post. > It may be fun to check out what kind of grade your own college or university received, but it’s pretty meaningless. Hello, Mr. Ad Hominem. I don’t know how much the people who were involved with them at their founding have an influence now, but I don’t see how it makes a difference. They’re making factual claims that are either true or false. Such as… > [@Motorgirl](#): > > The site also claims my alma mater required neither math nor science, but they actually require both. Were the creators of the website looking for a required course named “Science,” for pete’s sake? > Thus I am very skeptical where this web site got the information it used to grade schools. From the catalogs would seem to be the obvious place. Pretty much all colleges put them online. If you don’t mind my asking, where did you go to school? Cause it’s certainly possible things have to change. For instance: [QUOTE=JCubed] The University of Chicago gets no credit for Foreign Language or History. :rolleyes: I remember taking a year and a quarter, with mandatory attendance, and separate fifth-hour class time. And I can tell you it wasn’t my idea! [/QUOTE] but [http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/pdf/CURR.pdf](http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/pdf/CURR.pdf) says “completing (with a quality grade) a first-year language sequence” is enough. Those who say there’s errors – where did you go to school? Everyone says the website is wrong … howabout some specifics? This is in GQ, right? Let’s look at facts. We can argue whether or not their criteria are the best possible (I’m not at all convinced they are) or even good, but IMHO it’s a better approach than say, basing it on “reputation” and pricetag, which is pretty much all US News does. I like the objective, factual approach they take. So: where are they incorrect on the facts? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/29 "2010-08-29T07:14:22Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What school allows Slavic linguistics as a math substitute? Northwestern. It’s not a math substitute. It’s a “formal studies” substitute, which includes math, some linguistics courses, and music theory. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/30 "2010-08-29T07:20:01Z")
The thing is, their “facts” aren’t. As I mentioned above, they incorrectly described the requirements for graduation at my university. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/31 "2010-08-29T15:12:01Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > The thing is, their “facts” aren’t. As I mentioned above, they incorrectly described the requirements for graduation at my university. Yet we have no way to know if this is true unless you tell us the name of your uni. \*\*JCubed \*\*thought they were wrong, too, but it appears he was mistaken. Where did you go to school, and what is the error on the website? ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/32 "2010-08-30T13:01:03Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Can you place out of that requirement? My alma mater is the same, but apparently (according to their ranking criteria) if you can test out of it, it doesn’t count. (Yet testing out of a foreign language is okay.) They’re not even consistent. For my school, they actually do list a composition requirement, but I _did_ test out of it. (I think you had to get a 4 or 5 on one of the AP English exams; I got a 4 on the Lit exam.) ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/33 "2010-08-30T14:41:20Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > > [@pulykamell](#): > > > > Can you place out of that requirement? My alma mater is the same, but apparently (according to their ranking criteria) if you can test out of it, it doesn’t count. (Yet testing out of a foreign language is okay.) > > They’re not even consistent. For my school, they actually do list a composition requirement, but I _did_ test out of it. (I think you had to get a 4 or 5 on one of the AP English exams; I got a 4 on the Lit exam.) There’s a lot of schools that accept AP scores but not SAT. That’s not an unusual distinction to make. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/34 "2010-08-30T15:26:34Z")
All college rankings (or rankings of anything) are not to be trusted. They reflect the biases of the people who make them up, and even the slightest change (changing the weight you give to one category by a small amount) creates major differences in how the rankings come out. This particular site is even worse than people like US News; it seems to assume college should be teaching the same things they taught in 1945. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/35 "2010-08-30T16:11:32Z")
I think one thing that is not addressed is that while in some schools you _can_ game the system to have overly narrow courses as GE requirements, few students do. In practical terms a rigid one-size fits all GE requirement is not necessary for a student to get a broad education. Indeed for a signifigant population of students with special circumstances (say, international students) overly rigid GEs would be at the detriment of their education. My school had a wide variety of GE requirements that could be filled with an equally wide variety of classes. It would indeed be possible to get a degree while completely ignoring some subjects. But, this doesn’t mean you can ignore ALL of the subjects- at best you could dodge one or maybe two. Even then, it won’t be a complete dodge. I tried my best to get out of doing math, and I still had to take two math-heavy physics courses. Sure I avoided a pure math class, but I don’t think I missed out on much. I still got some quantitative thinking without having to grit my teeth through a class that I’d just forget immediately after anyway. Flexible GE requirements also allow someone to avoid the most basic courses in their major. If you are an American history major and you are going to spend four years studying specific topics in American history, it’s almost certainly a waste of your time to take a broad survey class populated by people who couldn’t care less about the subject. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/36 "2010-08-30T17:04:57Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > I think one thing that is not addressed is that while in some schools you _can_ game the system to have overly narrow courses as GE requirements, few students do. In practical terms a rigid one-size fits all GE requirement is not necessary for a student to get a broad education. Indeed for a signifigant population of students with special circumstances (say, international students) overly rigid GEs would be at the detriment of their education. > > My school had a wide variety of GE requirements that could be filled with an equally wide variety of classes. It would indeed be possible to get a degree while completely ignoring some subjects. But, this doesn’t mean you can ignore ALL of the subjects- at best you could dodge one or maybe two. Even then, it won’t be a complete dodge. I tried my best to get out of doing math, and I still had to take two math-heavy physics courses. Sure I avoided a pure math class, but I don’t think I missed out on much. I still got some quantitative thinking without having to grit my teeth through a class that I’d just forget immediately after anyway. > > Flexible GE requirements also allow someone to avoid the most basic courses in their major. If you are an American history major and you are going to spend four years studying specific topics in American history, it’s almost certainly a waste of your time to take a broad survey class populated by people who couldn’t care less about the subject. Where did you go to school? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/37 "2010-08-30T20:16:21Z")
> [@J\_Cubed](#): > > The University of Chicago gets no credit for Foreign Language or History. :rolleyes: Or economics. :rolleyes::rolleyes: They were too chicken to give MIT an F, so I don’t care. But Chicago, is an excellent example of what is wrong with this picture. They mark Chicago down for not requiring Econ, but give credit to some Podunk school that does - not considering that the education you get if you take Econ at Chicago is several orders of magnitude better than you’d get from some tired adjunct prof at the other school, who reads Samuelson at his students. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/38 "2010-08-30T20:22:12Z")
It goes like this, from best to worst: 1. Wossamatta U 2. Hamburger U 3. Clown College 4. Barber College 5. State College 6. Private College 7. Ivy League 8. Cardinals ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2010, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/39 "2010-08-30T21:30:12Z")
> [@furt](#): > > > [@Kyla](#): > > > > They’re not even consistent. For my school, they actually do list a composition requirement, but I _did_ test out of it. (I think you had to get a 4 or 5 on one of the AP English exams; I got a 4 on the Lit exam.) > > There’s a lot of schools that accept AP scores but not SAT. That’s not an unusual distinction to make. I’m not clear on what point you’re making. The website discounts schools with requirements you can test out of. They say that my alma mater requires a composition course. In theory, it does, but it is, in fact, possible to test out of it. So they should discount it. They don’t, because not only is it biased, it’s actually incorrect. Whether or not it’s the SATs or the AP exams is irrelevant. I’ve never heard of a university allowing someone to use their SAT scores to test out of a subject anyway. BTW, both **even sven** and I attended the University of California, Santa Cruz. I still agree with her assessment. I did have to take a quantitative course. So I took Astronomy 1 instead of a pure math class. Who cares? I still had to do math and think quantitatively, and it was much more interesting to me than calculus would have been. (I know this definitively because I ended up having to take calculus for my master’s degree and it was not fun.) ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609/40 "2010-08-31T00:30:26Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > > [@furt](#): > > > > There’s a lot of schools that accept AP scores but not SAT. That’s not an unusual distinction to make. > > I’m not clear on what point you’re making. The website discounts schools with requirements you can test out of. They say that my alma mater requires a composition course. In theory, it does, but it is, in fact, possible to test out of it. So they should discount it. They don’t, because not only is it biased, it’s actually incorrect. > > Whether or not it’s the SATs or the AP exams is irrelevant. I’ve never heard of a university allowing someone to use their SAT scores to test out of a subject anyway. AP credit is not testing out of a requirement; it’s getting credit for a course that you took in high school which fulfills the requirement. Even if I have that wrong, “[w]hether or not it’s the SATs or the AP exams” is still perfectly relevant because they’re requirements quite clearly say that they only discount testing out due to the SAT. They don’t say anything about AP credit, so that’s allowed. How is their rating of your school incorrect according to their criteria? Likewise, it’s within their criteria if a school waves the math requirement if you score well on an AP test or pass a departmental exam, but not if it’s due to SAT or ACT score (probably because that’s 9th grade math.) I’ve never heard of a school that waves requirements due to ACT/SAT scores, but there are some shitty schools out there. I know a guy in El Paso who went to UTEP some years back. Apparently he was the only person in the entire freshman class able to take calculus the 1st semester. Some place like that might do it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/college-rankings/551609.md?page=3)