Waterloo places top 10 in the US Parchment Student Choice Rankings 2016
In today's Washing Post, university rankings was the hot topic. In it's article "When students have choices among top colleges, which one do they choose?" it was no surprise to see institutions such as Stanford, MIT, and Yale being ranked in the top 3. However, what was interesting is the fact that the University of Waterloo cracked the top 10 rankings where Waterloo doesn't even make it into the US News rankings because we're located in Canada.
Waterloo operates the largest co-op education program in the world, meaning almost half of its 30,000 students alternate between four-month periods on campus and in the workplace. Because of co-ops, Waterloo students are accustomed to toggling between long stretches in the classroom and the work world while constantly refining and reflecting on what they learned in both places.
Washington Post
The rankings were conducted by Parchment Student Choice Rankings, an American college ranking based on actual student enrolment decisions. The rankings focused on which institutions do students pick when they have been accepted to more than one institution?
Tens of thousands of students have contributed to a database of over 697,936 acceptances at hundreds of colleges in the US. Using a formula similar to the one used to rank chess masters, Parchment helps decipher the meaning of those student choices.
parchment.com
University rankings, whether Canadian or American, are a tool to use in assisting students and their families as they research and make decisions as to which programs and which universities are the best fit for their academic and career goals. The final choice is ultimately the student's and should be based on personal fit and financial circumstances, not necessarily where others or their friends have gone.
