US News Rankings?

Question

I went to a liberal arts college in PA.  I have discovered recently my alma mater and its colleagues have voted to no longer participate in the US News college rankings.   http://www.collegenews.org/x7131.xml.  Do you think this is a good thing or do think rankings are really helpful when choosing a college?  In addition to a undergraduate degree; I have two master degrees and all three schools seemed pretty much the same to me in difficulty, so I am not sure how helpful rankings are because every employer I have worked for are more interested in my CPA than where I went to school.  I am just curious in what others think because I think about 95% of the schools out there give you the same education, but of course there are exceptions to rule like Harvard and Swarthmore.  Thanks

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

I think ranking can provide essential information for college applicants by comparing schools with their academic peers. Ranking can also help students to get to know an excellent school that may not have as big of a reputation as its academic peers. For instance, I never knew that the University of Pennsylvania and the California Institute of Technology were great schools until I looked at US News' ranking of undergraduate schools.

I agree that ranking is not everything, but it can provide additional information for college applicants.

noble_savage · Answer

The more specialized/advanced your degree, the more likely employers already know what the good schools in your field are so US News rankings are less relied upon as a credential. That seems to be your situation with the CPA. Also, I don't think US News even gives numerical rankings to schools below the top 100 anyway, so if the school is in that group then of course US News is useless.

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US News Rankings?

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