What is a better driver for important life decisions: your values or the opinion of someone who doesn’t know anything about you?
Families should ask themselves: are we even asking the right questions? For parents of college-bound teens, 2025 offers the perfect moment to rethink how you approach the college search. If your family’s been neck-deep in the rankings game, stressing over brands and acceptance rates, it’s time to do something different.
Sure, it’s tempting to lean on ranking. But here’s the truth we already know but easily forget: rankings are not built for your kid. They’re built to sell and drive clicks.
What matters: values, not vanity
A values-driven search starts by focusing on who your students are and what they need to thrive. Shelf the “best school” lists. Instead, ask:
- What do we value most about colleges? If you’re unsure, Forget the Rankings has some great tools to start conversations: www.forgettherankings.com.
- What kind of environment excites your student to learn?
- What kind of community makes them feel like they belong?
Remember: you are not just finding a good fit for college; you are finding a community to help your students succeed and flourish.
Use technology to peek behind the marketing curtain
Even small colleges spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing and admissions, making it difficult to see what’s happening behind the scenes, especially if you don’t know what to ask.
The good news is that the same technology that has helped colleges increase their funnel yield and marketing campaigns is also available and accessible to you, so you can see beyond the glossy brochures and engaging website videos.
Use tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude to ask the kinds of questions that matter:
- What are the retention, 4-year graduation, and job placement rates at [College X]?
High retention means students persist, graduating rates mean they finish on time, and the job placement rate means they are employed post-graduation. Schools with retention rates above 80% are usually doing something right. They keep students engaged, supported, and on track to graduate.
Unfortunately, too many colleges talk a big game about the importance of career preparation, but they often do not put much of their money where their mouth is. You need to ask the critical right questions about career outcomes, such as:
- How early do career services start working with students? (The earlier, the better.)
- What percentage of students secure internships before graduation?
- What percentage of graduates are employed or in grad school within six months?
- Are career services embedded into the college experience (usually in the form of a freshmen seminar), and what does that entail?
- What’s the career services to student ratio? Lower is better. A ”good” ratio is 1:500 or less; anything over 1:1500 means the career service unit is likely under-resourced.
Regarding career services information, do not solely rely on admissions counselors—these often recently graduated college students who are 20 or so years old might not know or have the most up-to-date data. Instead, call the Career Center directly for job placement rates and information.
Remember to first focus on the who, not on the what
Remember, this process isn’t about chasing prestige—it’s about helping your students find a place where they’ll thrive. The right college should excite them, support them, and prepare them for a future full of possibilities.
So this year, ditch the rankings and focus on values. Focus on who your students are, metrics that matter, and where they’ll feel empowered to grow.
Here’s to a year of clarity, purpose, and finding a great fit for college.
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