Are globecampus.ca rankings reliable?

Orha · Sep 19, 2012

I have a thread in which I was told certain things about SFU like small class sizes and such. then I saw in another thread that someone said to look at: http://www.globecampus.ca/navigator/rankings/ [Broken]
In this site it says different things than what I've been told. Can it be just because the site looks generally at the university and not specifically at the physics department? Or is this site overall misleading? Or maybe the information I got was wrong (though I doubt it because the person who wrote had first hand experience...)?
Overall I'm asking because I wanted to explore my options with other universities (for undergrad physics studies) and I wanted to know if this site is helpful in that regard or more misleading in my case.

camjohn · Sep 19, 2012

College rankings can never be 100% accurate. It's simply because there is no true objective indicator of which schools are "the best," because people have different preferences. You can make generally true comparisons between schools that are entirely different by simple prestigious standards (Yale vs. Humboldt), but even with comparisons that obvious, people have different preferences. Some of the most extensive college rankings -- like USNews -- still uses methodology criticized by some, and even if they didn't -- even if they used the most perfect methodology possible -- subjectivity still comes to play.

As for the website you provided, I wouldn't go too much based on that. I'm assuming that you're looking for basic prestige rankings, and I'm sure this website can give you basic insight into these rankings. As for detailed analysis, I'd say probably not.

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Are globecampus.ca rankings reliable?

Orha

camjohn