College Rankings
As most of you know, the US News & World Report rankings have been released, and the push is on for students and families who believe that getting into one of the US News top tier colleges will make or break their future. It's simply not true for US News or any other ranking tool. There are several ranking tools--each with its own criteria. Make sure you know what attributes the particular tool is using, so that you can judge how important those attributes are to you. One tool that I think bears looking at is the Forbes list, which also just came out and which puts more of an emphasis on students' perspectives: http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/colleges-university-ratings-opinions-colleges-09-intro.html While any ranking list can be a useful tool to compare colleges on a given list of criteria, none should be used as a final authority as you construct your own college list. I know just how tough it is to listen to the hype, the peer pressure, the family pressure and so