You hear so much about rankings when it comes to universities and colleges. This can be a bit confusing as you may not know what makes the rankings or what factors are most important. The truth is that there are so many different ranking systems and websites out there, that you might just find conflicting information. Though a potential student should look at several different factors when they make their decision, rankings will likely play into it. If you want to know how a university is ranked, you want to be sure to look into each system itself for a full understanding. If however you want to know which factors are crucial in ranking a university, consider a few things that carry across the board.
Who is Providing the Input?
In many cases a ranking system doesn’t necessarily tell you who the data or inputs come from. This can therefore provide a picture that isn’t always clear. You want to try and understand who is providing the rankings. Is the information and surveys coming from students, from faculty, from alumni, or from experts in the field? Are they asking what students who attend the university really think? Is it all based on a certain criteria that a publication or website measures against? These are all important to understand because they give you different results depending on the point of view. Try to look into this to see what the results are based off of.
What is Measured Specifically?
If you are reading the reviews or rankings for a particular university, do you know exactly what was measured? Is it ranking their placement rates for graduating students? Is it measuring the medical program? When you hear that a particular university is good at something, do you know how that is measured and what is considered? Dig deep and really do your research because not all ranking systems are created equally. Be sure that you see what the criteria really are and what they are used for in terms of proper measurements.
How Current is the Data?
If a university once received top billing for their programs, they will always boast of that for promotional purposes. Be sure that you know how current the reviews are from. Though they may have been ranked high in something at one time, are they still? Rankings can and will change, and therefore you want to understand if the information in front of you is current. Just because they were good at something once doesn’t necessarily mean that they will always be good at it. This is very important as rankings are done so very often.
MM Frederick blogs about how to evaluate the criteria for online university rankings 2011.