New U.S. News & World Report Top College rankings

I applied everywhere. I had no idea where I wanted to go. I was recruited to play Division I football, but not by any school where I wanted to go (UNLV, Fresno State)

In California, you can apply to all of the UC schools with one application.

 

You should be able to apply everywhere with one application. More high school kids would be going to college!

 

If there were sports writer rankings, they would go like this:

(1) Missouri
(2) Syracuse
(3) Northwestern

Not necessarily in that order.

I am almost taken aback when I meet someone in the business who didn't go to one of those three.

 

Maybe it's because I never worked on the East Coast, but I can't think of any writers I know from Syracuse.

Quite a few from North Carolina and Michigan, though.

 

And Michigan doesn't even have a journalism major.

I'm shocked that you haven't run into Syracuse grads. It's even more pervasive on the broadcast side.

 

I always seemed to run into or work with people who went to Missouri, Florida, Northwestern, Syracuse, Ohio, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan...

 

They're all camping out compared to Ball State.

 

I applied to, I believe, 10 schools for undergrad and then five for grad school. During both processes, I ranked my interest in the schools at the beginning of the process and ended up going to schools that were near the bottom of the list both times.

 

The classification of urban vs suburban campuses makes no sense. Somehow Notre Dame is an "urban" campus but Saint Mary's -- right across the street from ND -- is suburban.

 

The number of quality public schools in California is really extraordinary. Kind of wish I had thought more about this when applying to schools. Great schools, great weather and, at least until relatively recently, a rather great deal. Sad the recent fiscal troubles will dismantle the excellent system California put in place.

On a more general note, as most people recognize, the idea of these rankings is rather silly. Different schools fit different people. If the rankings are making it difficult for you to decide between Columbia and Standford (or Berkeley or UCLA or Texas), you're doing something wrong.

On a similar note, for most people with choices, the wisest move is to probably go to Big U in your homestate-especially if you plan to go to graduate school*. Although I really loved my undergraduate experience at a highly ranked, out-of-state, public school, in retrospect, I probably should have saved my parents a lot of money and just gone to Rutgers, a fine school that would have been a lot cheaper--even if it's ranked a bit lower. All big state universities have excellent professors at the top of their fields and tremendous resources. More important, college is, for the most part, college--you'll meet friends, learn a lot, and have fun no matter where you go. You'll get out of it what you put into, both inside and outside the classroom (probably learned more working for the newspaper than in any class, for instance).

The only real reasons I could see from deviating from this plan are: 1.) you really don't want to be a huge school; 2.) you have a great scholarship elsewhere. But neither of those things has anything to do with rankings.

That said, I would not give the same advice for someone going to graduate school.

* Law schools, for instance, really only care about GPA/LSAT; might be slightly different for more academic fields, but all big state schools are going to have big-name professors that can help you out.

 

Although even on this point, rankings are less important than applicants make them out to be. If you're choosing between the top 10 or so law schools, let's say, rank should not play a part in deciding to go to NYU/Columbia/Chicago over Michigan/Berkeley/UVa.

 

Wow, Mizzou, that is really convenient. I wish more states did that. When I applied to Vanderbilt last year for a m.ed program, the application fee was waived if you submitted an online one, but you had to pay 75 bucks (I think) for the snail mail variety.

My sister graduated from UNC-CH. Might be the prettiest campus I have ever seen. I didn't get into Syracuse (though not the journalism program).