Mitchel Benson
Magazines rank colleges using a wide variety of factors. (Julia Ann Easley/UC Davis photo)
‘The level of prestige given to a school by its ranking often overshadows other factors….’
Mitchel Benson of University Communications and father of two university students
The rankings
We look at some familiar and some not so familiar university rankings. [more…]
Visits, homework, rankings help students make the right choice
Choosing the right college can be nerve-wracking — a student will likely find his or her life direction there. It’s no wonder, then, that many students and their parents use college rankings to compare and select schools.
But rankings may not be the best source of information when choosing a college, says Mitchel Benson, who, as interim assistant vice chancellor for University Communications, watches the rankings.
“The level of prestige given to a school by its ranking often overshadows other factors such as the environment of the campus and the strength of the particular academic program in which the student is interested,” says Benson, who has one son studying at UC Davis and another at UCLA.
College rankings list universities in an order determined by a wide range of factors. In addition to institutional rankings, there are also rankings of specific academic programs, departments and schools.
Ranking methods
U.S. News & World Report’s annual college rankings are perhaps some of the best-known, but also the most controversial. The magazine ranks schools based on up to 15 criteria; the three categories that receive the most weight are student retention rates, opinions of “top academics,” and faculty salary.
Each criterion is assigned a different weight and colleges are then ranked against their peers based on their composite weighted score.
U.S. News ranked UC Davis as 44 among top research universities in the nation, under its Best Colleges listing for 2009. In contrast, Washington Monthly ranked UC Davis 10th. But what do those numbers mean?
Each magazine or newspaper uses a diverse set of criteria — there is no scientific methodology, and rankings vary widely.
For example, Washington Monthly looks at a university and its students’ commitment to serving the country — a very different perspective than the one used by U.S. News and others.
So when parents and students use rankings as a tool in selecting a college, they should have a good sense of the methodology behind them, Benson says.
See for yourself
In Benson’s experience, the single most important thing students can do in choosing where they will be for at least the next four years is to visit the campus — get a sense of place and check out the residence halls, sit in on a class and talk to professors.
Engage with current and prospective students on campus or on Facebook or some other social network site to get a sense of what peers are saying.
“The school should fit the student,” Benson said.
On the UC Davis home page : Members of the Aggie Pack root for their school during the UC Davis homecoming game Oct. 11. (Karin Higgins/UC Davis photo)