What Exactly is a Good College?

Like most millennials who fashion themselves unofficial arbiters of culture, I have a Letterboxd account where I meticulously log each movie I see.

I recently decided to rate each film viewed rather than simply “liking” them. My hesitancy was largely due to the fact that I have never worked on any film production; who was I to say that The French Connection is a five-star film while Dirty Harry only nets four or Spotlight warranting five stars while The Post only gets three and a half? Do I like these films because they are good, or are they good because I like them?

This quest to ascribe a subjective assessment (good or bad) pales in comparison to the ubiquity of college and university rankings. Categories such as who has the best campus dining or who offers the best return on investment have been assessed and then ranked by publications as disparate as Town and Country and Poets and Quants. This leaves families scratching their heads and wondering: what exactly is a “good” college or university?

I previously wrote on how families should approach college/university rankings and offered three pieces of advice:

• Focus on the more general numbers such as admit rate, retention rate, and graduation rate

  • Admit rate: the difficulty of “getting into” a school

  • Retention rate: how effectively a school keeps it students enrolled year-to-year (specific emphasis on first-year to second-year)

  • Graduation rate: how effectively a school ensures its students to complete all required coursework to attain a degree

• Figure out what matters the most to you and narrow down your options

  • Geographic location (state/region or rural/urban/suburban)

  • Campus size

  • Specific major

  • Campus life (Greek system, Division I athletics, religious/spiritual life, etc)

  • Type of school (liberal arts, research university, religious affiliation)

• Personally connect with the school itself

  • Tour campus

  • Speak with faculty, staff, students, and/or alumni

For you eagle-eyed readers out there, you should have noticed that how high a school is ranked or prestige in general was not mentioned even once. Much in the same way that you might fall asleep 20 minutes into watching a film that received major accolades or raucous standing ovations at festivals, if you visit the campus of a highly-ranked school and it just doesn’t feel right, that’s fine to cross it off your list. It’s much better to find out before you submit an application or even enroll at that school.

For example, instead of looking at who has the best-rated campus dining experiences, perhaps ask the following: does the school offer a variety of dietary options and take issues such as cross-contamination and food allergies seriously?

What should matter the most to you is not whether the school is #1 or #50 on some external list but rather if it’s the place where you can thrive academically and socially. After all, college rankings are like BBQ joints in Central Texas or pizza spots in New York: there are plenty of great places out there and the true difference in quality between #1 and #50 is ultimately insignificant.