August is college ranking season. In my rush to put up our own annual ranking, I missed another new release of America’s “best” colleges.
On Sunday Parade, the national Sunday magazine distributed to more than 400 newspapers in the United States, came out with its own directory of America’s top colleges.
Parade’s favorite small public schools include such colleges as the College of New Jersey, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and SUNY Geneseo. Top large public schools are the University of Georgia, the University of Oregon, and the University of Texas at Austin.
People often attack the U.S. News college rankings because of the way that the rating is based too much on peer assessment, a subjective measure of people’s opinion about various schools.
Parade, however, uses only a subjective measure. As Caralee Adams at Education Week explains, Parade created its list using the following process: “A panel of 43 high school counselors was asked to recommend outstanding schools that often fly under the radar.”
