CMU School of Drama


Sunday, September 14, 2008

University ranked poorly among colleges in Forbes

The Tartan Online: "The news is out: Carnegie Mellon remains one of the top 25 universities in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report. The university was ranked 22nd overall, while the undergraduate business and engineering programs ranked sixth and ninth, respectively.

However, Carnegie Mellon did not fare so well in a new Forbes list of colleges and universities, which placed Carnegie Mellon 266th out of 596 institutions."

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find it pretty funny actually that we are ranked 266. I'm sure another part of the reason why we are so low is because all of the majors are very specific and we are missing a lot of common majors among other schools. I do agree with the quote though that people base their preconceptions about schools to heavily on these lists that rank schools. At least CMU has something to work on in terms of all of the other categories.

Ethan Weil said...

My feeling is that these lists are way overvalued by most administrators. Newsweek maintains a listing of high schools, which my high school worked very hard to keep a spot on, but often at the expense of actual education. Rarely are the criterion really well formed.

Brooke Marrero said...

I agree with Ethan. Some of the criteria that Forbes is basing their evaluation off of has nothing at all to do with education. When it comes down to it, what is important is the success rate of the school's alumni, not how some of the school's students rated their teachers online.

arosenbu said...

I wonder how many prospectives this year will take this list into account. I know that when I was a senior in high school, there were kids who could quote the top 50 schools rankings by different categories and different companies. I hope that they don't turn away from CMU because of this. Yes, people do take the rankings as the word of god, but sometimes they don't have much else to go by. :-/

NorthSide said...

It's always nice to say you are from a top-ranked school, but why is CMU so caught up on lists? Some say we are good, some say we are bad. Who cares? It's all about the student's experience here and what they achieve here. That's something that cannot be accounted on lists and that only factor that really matters when it boils down to why you go to that college. Lists don't make a college's reputation, the alumni do.

dmxwidget said...

It si funny how yo can be ranked both 22nd and 266th among the nations colleges. There needs to be a better way to rank the schools that combines all of the important information about the school, academics, activities, etc. It seems like the different approaches are what causes the fluctuation. There needs to be a better way to rank the schools, maybe by each general major, or something.

Sam Thompson said...

Going off that last post, I don't think we should rank schools, and I think that this article proves it. When a school can come in 22nd on one list and 266th on another, it shows that these rankings are worthless. They are also poor ways of choosing a college. A prospective college student needs to make their decision based on what is the right fit for them. These lists do not give that. You could go to the #1 school on either of these lists and absolutely hate it because it's not right for you, and that will affect the education you get. Rankings are worthless, make your own decisions!

BWard said...

Yeah, but among colleges _on_ forbes...
</bad_joke>

cmu's a great school no matter how many alumni think so - im my chats with some former students here they all remember times where the administration wasn't always looking out for student interest. that's a valid reason to not want to donate money. i think that now the school wants to help the student body more than in years past, but is lacking the financial means to do so. they're working on improving buildings and facilities first, something i think is a great step. baker/porter, doherty, CFA - many of the buildings on campus are pretty old and in need of some major repair. in addition to starting work on repairing these older buildings, the master plan for campus improvement also has lofty goals of creating new buildings on campus - the gates center is one of them, purnell and the UC were part of the last master plan.

Megan Spatz said...

I'm not too surprised that we are so low on the list. From what I hear other students in different majors saying about their teachers, I can conclude that a good deal of students don't feel they are receiving adequate instruction.

Jacob Jimenez said...

This list only reflects the types of formulas that were employed in this ranking. Just like any other place, there are going to be some flaws; this ranking doesn't seem to address our strong points, which are vast. Even still, there should not be paid to much mind to ratings unless it is known how the conclusion was met.

P.S. I hardly find it remotely plausible that we would be only four spots above the University of Cheer leading

Anonymous said...

i think these rankings are pretty much pointless. it is all a matter of some statistics and personal opinion. i mean i am not upset with the ranking, i personally don't care. but it is important to remember that a school is only as good as you are determined to learn. it is going to depend on what you put forward.