Do College Rankings Matter?

Browse America's Top 100 Colleges

Do college rankings matter? This is an issue I have began to think about more and more.  I really wonder if college rankings are there solely to fill the appetite of anxious parents? Or do students really give weightage to this metric in their college selection process? Do these rankings matter when you search or look for a job? Do companies care where your school is on the list, or judge your quality as a candidate based on these rankings?

(Suggested Read: 2014's TOP ROI Colleges; Top Medical Schools in 2014; Best Online Bachelor's and Master's Program in 2014)

I must admit I do not have sufficient answers at this time. Like many others, I am a victim of the system, media hype... and am a regular reader of college rankings published by credible sources like U.S. News, Forbes and World Report. However, a  survey conducted in October 2013 clearly shows that prospective college students care about college rankings nearly as much as their anxious mothers and fathers do.

The Student Poll survey, conducted by the Art & Science Group, a higher-education consulting firm, drew on responses from 846 high-school seniors. Two-thirds of those surveyed said they had considered rankings in deciding which college to apply. And nearly two-thirds agreed that rankings play a significant role in trying to sort out the differences between colleges.

The survey also found that students with the highest SAT scores — 1300 and above — were more likely to have considered the rankings in their application decisions (85 percent) than students with SAT scores of less than 1300.

In my opinion, college ranking is a resource for students and parents specifically to validate the cost of attending college based on certain performance metrics and the education landscape offered by these institutions. I would advise caution in reading too much into these rankings as the fact of the matter is, that numbers do not mean anything.  Rankings will not determine who can study at an Ivy League. It's the quality of a student that makes it possible to study at a college that he or she is interested in.

With that in mind, let's go through the list of America's Top 100 Colleges.

FORBES has partnered with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) for ranking The Top Colleges in the U.S. These college rankings are based on -What are students getting out of college? The staff at CCAP use 12 factors to calculate these rankings, each of which falls into one of the five general categories below:

1. Student Satisfaction;
2. Post-Graduate Success;
3. Student Debt;
4. Graduation Rate; and
5. Nationally Competitive Awards.


Browse The List