Forbes College Rankings 2009

Anyone disappointed in the 2009 USMMA placement(s) on the Forbes rankings?

I seem to remember KP being higher in the past few years?

United States Military Academy - #1
United States Air Force Academy - #7
United States Naval Academy - #30
United States Coast Guard Academy - #115
United States Merchant Marine Academy - #247

2013Parent said:

United States Military Academy - #1
United States Air Force Academy - #7
United States Naval Academy - #30
United States Coast Guard Academy - #115
United States Merchant Marine Academy - #247

Click to expand...

VMI- #79
Gotta say though that this whole exercise is really pretty questionable & I can't imagine making your choice based on rankings like this. It's nice to be recognized but I wouldn't invest much more than the beer you are drinking while harrasing your buddy over these numbers.

Bruno is 100 % correct. I mean VMI is # 79 in forbes ranking. And that fine institution is not even in princeton reviews best 371 rankings. Just something for the peanut gallery to argue about. Rest assured that the cadets and midshipman at all the service academies and senior military colleges don't have the time to worry or care about the ranking nonsense. That being said . Congradulations to all the forbes ranking winners. I'm not disappointed that my DS attends the 247th best school in America.

I would take all of these surveys with a large grain of salt. It is difficult to determine exactly how much each of the criteria they use influence their decisions. Is West Point a great school? ... Of course it is. Is it 30 places better than Annapolis?.....Probably not. Is Lagrange college in Georgia better than Georgia Tech? ...I seriously doubt it.

Being an old ME prof from RPI (somewhere in the 400's on this list) and a graduate from Syracuse (somewhat higher up) I can't get too excited either. RATEMYPROFESSOR.com is largely a popularity contest and doesn't begin to rate how a professor can teach. To have it a major portion of this ranking is about as useful as reading bird entrails to predict the future (albeit less messy and a lot less harsh on the bird!).

We used to say about engineering schools: "A slide rule works the same anywhere you go". Aside from showing that I'm over the hill, this saying sums it up: If you have good instructors, students who want to learn, and the facilities to pull it off, it will all work.

I honestly don't think my oldest could do any better for himself than KP. The ranking doesn't work into my math at all!

DD is majoring in international affairs at George Washington University. They ALWAYS take a beating in these surveys because they have a larger number of "part time faculty." They are part time because they have day jobs at the State Dept, CIA and any number of "alphabet soup" govt agencies. Those who are rating these colleges can neither appreciate nor quantify the wealth of "real world " knowledge and experience these part time faculty members bring to the classroom. If there really was an accurate way to rate colleges then all of these surveys would produce similar results. Clearly, they don't.

Did you see the evaluation criteria?

2013Parent said:

Anyone disappointed in the 2009 USMMA placement(s) on the Forbes rankings?

I seem to remember KP being higher in the past few years?

Click to expand...

If you go to the following link
http://www.centerforcollegeaffordability.org/pages/page.asp?page_id=78499

and look at the underlying

"Methodology" and "Component Rankings" you'll see the stuff they based the rankings on and understand. It's not a beauty contest but there's lots of stuff that USMMA and USCGA just can't score well on, while there are others that are total homeruns. Also if KP had 5 more points it would be up by USCGA if it had 10 it would be in the top 100 easily. Getting them wouldn't be that hard if you totally changeds the nature of KP

Personnally the link I like on the CCAP page is the "Do It Yourself" one, I did and surprisingly in my survey KP was first by a large measure...