Forbes - America's Best Colleges

[Greenie]

http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/11/best-colleges-universities-rating-ranking-opinions-best-colleges-10_land.html?boxes=Homepagemostpopular

NDSU #577
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/94/best-colleges-10_North-Dakota-State-University_94281.html

UND #579
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/94/best-colleges-10_University-of-North-Dakota_950350.html

[tony]

Woohoo #577 out of 610!

Montana Tech, the NAIA school that NDSU scheduled in football (and beat, btw) is significantly higher.

Oh well, the two South Dakota schools didn't even make the list so I guess we have that going for us. :)

[Greenie]

I was sad about our low ranking until I found out that SDSU and USD weren't even on the list

[bisonmike2]

Under notable alumni for NDSU they list "Phil Hansen - former super bowl winning NFL player" Oops.

[MNLonghorn10]

damn...st cloud state has 17,000 enrolled?

[TheBisonator]

Western Illinois at #575 ahead of us??...

At Western Illinois, to get in, you need to spell your name right on the application. No way in hell WIU is better than NDSU.

[Tatanka]

Even though they seemed to get the in-state ranking correct, these rankings are usually pretty worthless.

[TheBisonator]

Even though they seemed to get the in-state ranking correct, these rankings are usually pretty worthless.

Agreed. The only ones that seem to have any kind of general sense of being near the truth are the Carnegie and US News tier classifications. Not their rankings, just their classifications.

[Bison bison]

Carnegie is not a ranking, it is a classification.

US News is an absolute joke. I feel sorry for anyone who factors in the US News ranking in their selection of schools.

[Hammersmith]

Carnegie is not a ranking, it is a classification.

US News is an absolute joke. I feel sorry for anyone who factors in the US News ranking in their selection of schools.

Agreed. Although I'm happy the US News ranking exists. They helped create the Common Data Set format to get the info for that ranking. Though the US News ranking is crap, the data can be very helpful when looking for a specific bit of info.

[Bison bison]

!

I'd go to a real source: http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/

I wouldn't use that to determine where to go to school.

[WYOBISONMAN]

Hmmm.....not to great when compared to the Montana schools. I wonder what factors are hurting us?

[Bison bison]

I'd say they the biggest factor is that they subjectively chose measures the ensure that nation's elite institutions are ranked in the top 50 and really don't give a hoot about anybody else.

Then each year they make minor adjustments to the weighting to make it look their ranking actually incorporates dynamics that exist.

"OMG! Why did I go to Princeton, they we're #1 my junior year. Now they are down to #7. OMG! OMG! OMG!"

[Hammersmith]

!

I'd go to a real source: http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/

I wouldn't use that to determine where to go to school.

Oh, god no. I mean it's helpful when you want to know how many freshmen are at a particular school, or what a school's acceptance rate is. Since a lot of colleges post their survey online, it helps people like me when I want info to answer a question. IPEDS has good data, but it's not exactly the easiest to use. Actually, I take that back. IPEDS is easier to use for most people, but often I like to see the raw numbers. IPEDS has a tendancy to express info in percentages. You can still get the raw numbers, but you have to use the IPEDS website to create a custom spreadsheet. CDS(when available) is almost always the exact same data, but it's in an easier format for me when I just want a couple facts.

http://www.ndsu.edu/admission/CDS/cds0809.htm (getting pissed that NDSU never posted its 2009-10 CDS report)
http://www.sdstate.edu/about/institutional-research/surveys/index.cfm
http://www.und.edu/dept/datacol/cds/
http://www.usd.edu/academics/academic-affairs/institutional-research/common-data-set.cfm

[tony]

Random: They talk about how competitive some schools are based on admission standards. Wouldn't a published grade distribution for each college at a university be more revealing? There's a bit of grade inflation going on out there.