Best Colleges 2018: Find the Best Colleges for You!
336
Best Colleges 2018: Find the Best Colleges for You!
336Paperback(Soft Cover)
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781931469876 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | U.S. News & World Report |
| Publication date: | 10/24/2017 |
| Series: | Best Colleges |
| Edition description: | Soft Cover |
| Pages: | 336 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.40(w) x 10.40(h) x 0.70(d) |
| Age Range: | 13 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Anne McGrath is the managing editor of U.S. News & World Report's publications. She has created and implemented the editorial vision for numerous editions of U.S. News' annual "Best" guidebooks — such as Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools, and Best Hospitals — as well as editing such U.S. News publications as A Parent's Guide to STEM and U.S. News Ultimate Guide to Law Schools. A former high school English teacher, Anne's experience as a magazine journalist includes extensive coverage of education, health, personal finance, and investing.
Robert J. Morse is chief data strategist for U.S. News & World Report and has worked at the company since 1976. He develops the methodologies and surveys U.S. News' annual education rankings, such as Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools, and Best Global Universityies. Bob keeps a close eye on higher-education trends to make sure the rankings offer prospective students the best analysis available. He is a frequently quoted authority on quality measurements in education.
Brian Kelly is the Editor and Chief Content Officer of U.S. News & World Report, who guided the former newsweekly magazine through its transition into a major multimedia source of news and consumer information in such "life decision" fields as education, health care, and personal finances. A former Washington Post senior editor, Brian is the author or co-author of four books — "Amazon," "The Last Forest: The Amazon in the Age of Globalization," "Adventures in Porkland: How Washington Wastes Your Money and Why They Won't Stop," and "The Four Little Dragons."
Ned Johnson is founder of and tutor-geek at PrepMatters (prepmatters.com), where, along with colleagues, he torments teens with test prep, educational counseling, and general attempts to help them thrive. He is the co-author of "Conquering the SAT: How Parents Can Help Teens Overcome the Pressure and Succeed." Ned is a sought-after speaker on best practices of study skills, sleep deprivation, parent-teen dynamics and test anxiety.
A graduate of the Universityof N.C. at Chapel Hill and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Beth Howard worked in New York as an associate editor and in Los Angeles as the West Coast editor for Omni Magazine, covering science and the environment. She served as senior editor at SELF, New Woman (health), and My Generation magazines, and later returned to SELF as editor-at-large. Beth has penned scores of articles for print and digital, including Good Housekeeping, Conceive, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, The Washington Post, Glamour, Prevention, Fitness, Ladies’ Home Journal, MORE, AARP: The Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, and Woman’s Day, and has written health columns for Details, Bride’s, Shape, Babytalk, and Reader’s Digest. In 1998, she published the book, "Mind Your Body: A Sexual Health and Wellness Guide for Women" (St. Martin’s Press).
Arlene Weintraub is a science journalist and author with 20 years of experience writing about healthcare, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. Her recent book, "Heal: The Vital Role of Dogs in the Search for Cancer Cures" (ECW Press 2015), brings to life the world of comparative oncology and the many ways dogs are helping in the war on cancer. Her first book, "Selling the Fountain of Youth" (Basic Books 2010), is an expose on the anti-aging industry.
Elizabeth Gardner has been a freelance writer since 1993, focusing on health care business and policy (especially health information technology and measuring the quality of care), medical research, bio- and nanotechnology, and the Internet and electronic commerce. She is a contributing editor for Health Data Management and has written for such publications as Modern Healthcare, Pharmaceutical Executive, Journal of American Health Policy, U.S. News & World Report, Wall Street Journal Europe, Popular Science, Health-IT World, and Crain’s Detroit Business.
Margaret Loftus is an award-winning journalist, editor, and content creator specializing in food, travel, higher education, and healthcare. She has worked for a variety of print and digital media outlets including U.S. News & World Report, NationalGeographic.com, and Virtuoso Life magazine. She is a contributing editor for National Geographic Traveler.
Courtney Rubin was for five years a London-based staff writer for People magazine. She has reported stories on six continents, in countries including Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Rubin, a former senior writer for Washingtonian magazine, has written for the New York Times magazine, U.S. News & World Report's guidebooks, Time, Marie Claire,The Guardian and other publications. She is the author of The Weight-Loss Diaries (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
Interviews
From the foreword by Brian Kelly, Editor and Chief Content Officer of U.S. News: This college search thing can be a little intimidating, especially if you’re going through it for the first time. This is our 33rd go-round at U.S. News, so we feel like we’ve got some experience worth sharing. Over the years, we’ve improved our information and sharpened our focus, with our primary objective being to help students and their parents make one of life’s most important – and costliest – decisions. Prospective students and their parents need objective measures that allow them to evaluate and compare schools. The U.S. News rankings are one tool to help them make choices, along with all the other insights and guidance contained in these pages. This sort of assistance is more relevant than ever, with some private colleges now costing around $250,000 for a bachelor’s degree. At the same time, many public high schools have greatly reduced their college counseling resources, leaving students and parents to educate themselves about the search and admission process. Of course, we have adjusted our ranking methodology over the years to reflect changes in the world of higher education, and we make it clear that we are not doing peer-reviewed social science research, although we do maintain very high survey and data standards. We have always been open and transparent. We have always said that the rankings are not perfect. The first were based solely on schools’ academic reputation among leaders at peer institutions; we later developed a formula in which reputation accounts for 22.5 percent of a school’s score and important quantitative measures such as graduation and retention rates, average class size and student-faculty ratios account for the rest. Over time, we have shifted weight from inputs (indicators of the quality of students and resources) to outputs (success in graduating students). We operate under this guiding principle: The methodology is altered only if a change will better aid our readers and web audience in comparing schools as they’re deciding where to apply and enroll. It has helped us a great deal to have these principles to focus on as we have faced the inevitable criticisms from academia about our rankings’ growing influence. One main critique remains: that it is impossible to reduce the complexities of a college’s offerings and attributes to a single number. It’s important to keep in mind that our information is a starting point. The next steps in a college search should include detailed research on a smaller list of choices, campus visits and conversations with students, faculty and alumni wherever you can find them. Feedback from academia has helped improve the rankings over time. We meet with our critics, listen to their points of view, debate them on the merits of what we do, and make appropriate changes. U.S. News is keenly aware that the higher education community is also a major audience for our rankings. We understand how seriously academics, college presidents, trustees and governing boards take our data. They study, analyze and use them in various ways, including benchmarking against peers, alumni fundraising, and advertising to attract students. What does all of this mean in today’s global information marketplace? U.S. News has become a respected, unbiased resource that higher education administrators and policymakers and the college-bound public worldwide turn to for reliable guidance. In fact, the Best Colleges rankings have become a key part of the evolving higher education accountability movement. Universityies are increasingly being held responsible for their policies, how their funds are spent, the level of student engagement, and how much graduates have learned. The U.S. News rankings have become the annual public benchmark to measure the academic performance of the country’s colleges and universities. We know our role has limits. The rankings should only be used as one factor in the college search – we’ve long said that there is no single “best college.” There is only the best college for you or, more likely, a handful of good options, one of which will turn out to be a great fit. Besides the rankings, we can help college-bound high school students and their parents by providing a wealth of information on all aspects of the application process, from getting in to getting financial aid. Our website, usnews.com, features thousands of pages of rankings, research, sortable data, photos, videos and a personalized tool called College Compass. We’ve been doing this for over three decades, so we know the process is not simple. But our experience tells us the hard work is worth it in the end.