What's the difference between a "bad" college and a "good" college and how am I supposed to know?

That's an interesting question, and there's no consensus on what criteria separate "good" from "bad" schools. The USN&WR Ratings have been heavily criticized for being driven by irrelevant factors and being subject to gaming.

There was an newspaper article recently by Pulitzer Prize winner Kathleen Parker which discussed an alternate ranking system based on an institution's commitment to seven core general education factors which are thought to define a good broad liberal arts education:

Composition

Literature

Foreign Language (at Intermediate Level)

U.S. Government or History

Economics

Mathematics

Natural or Physical Sciences

For completeness, here are the sixteen colleges which received an "A" grade in the ACTA list:

Baylor

CUNY-Brooklyn

East Tennessee State

Kennesaw State

Lamar

St. John's College (MD)

St. John's College (NM)

Tennessee State

Texas A&M (College Station)

Texas A&M (Corpus Christi)

Thomas Aquinas

U.S. Air Force Academy

U.S. Military Academy (West Point)

U of Arkansas—Fayetteville

U of Dallas

Incidentally, the scores of some renowned colleges are as follows:

Harvard D

Yale F

Princeton C

Northwestern F

Chicago B

Washington U in St. Louis F

Vassar F

Duke B

Amherst F

Stanford C

Johns Hopkins F

Cornell F

Hillsdale B

UCLA C

Berkeley F

Williams F

What is important is whether a college is good for you. Will it help you become the person God intended you to be? Will it help you achieve your dreams for your life? Will you be a better person for having attended the school? Will you be happy while you are there?

Visiting the campus is a good way for you know find out whether a place is right for you. It is true that you only get a little exposure to what the college is like, but if a college's administration stresses their beautiful new buildings but never mention academics, where do you think the adminstrations priorities lie? If you are given a tour of a campus and the school emphasizes its great technology but shows you a typical classroom covered in chalk dust with an overhead projector in a corner, what will you think about its committment to using modern instructional technologies?

Some people will equate "good" with "hard to get into" and "bad" with "easy to get into." However, it is not that simple. Some will equate "good" with how good the parties are (not a good choice IMHO). Some will equate "good" with the success of the alumni (a better choice IMHO). Some will equate "good" with the quality of the research. You need to decide what makes a college "good" for you and then start researching.

Look in Newsweek or Time or Princeton Review website. There are many different reasons why they label a school as bad & as good: student: professor ratio, extra curricular activities, GPA average, how many people get jobs after graduation, the campus, how many people continue w/ further education, how many majors they offer, climate, campus and so on.

It really depends on what your eventual goal is. If you're planning to go to medical school, you would need a school with a lot of out of classroom experiences for premeds. If you want to travel the world, you would want a school with a strong travel abroad program. You need to sit down and thing about what you expect to gain out of college.

Then, you have to start asking questions. A school will gladly tell you about its rank according to US News. But that's usually irrelevant as to whether the school is a good fit for you. You should ask what programs exist for someone with your career goal. If there are any specific experiences that you want in college, you should ask about those too. For me, I want to go to graduate school, so I looked for schools that helped undergrads get research experience. When I went on a tour of my current school, they emphasized undergraduate research even without me asking about it. That's how I knew it was a good school for me (along with other factors like size, location, availability of my major, etc).

the college's reputation as far as the academics go you can find a list of rankings at many sites just google the program your thinking of and best and worst colleges

A good college has good academics, campus life, and a good campus and a bad college has just the opposite.

Hey buddy, Nice way to ask question,Lets know the views, Although there are lots of colleges running on,the judgement of "good" and "bad" is so much needed.

These choice may be based on several minds views like study basis, fun basis, infrastructure basis, and much more relevant.

To have good chooser in yourself, up to date with recent Era's changes as ranking positions and more..

look up Newsweek for Rankings of Best Colleges and Universities.

They've done the research for you.

when no output comes of a college it is known as bad college.....when a college is giving good outputs it will be a good college.....

output = good student with knowledge of whichever course he did... :h

Links:

http://www.garynorth.com/public/department89.cfm

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best...

http://www.eduinreview.com/blog/2009/02/the-worst-...