Fourth Tier College?

Hi there, can someone explain me what is a fourth tier college, please check this website address to take this college as an example, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college...


The following is the ranking for this college:





U.S. News ranking: Comprehensive Colleges–Bachelor's (Midwest), fourth tier





Can someone explain me what this ranking mean? Does it mean is a very good college, what's the exact definition of this?

Fourth Tier College?
Tier learner;


Great question and I applaud you for researching colleges. Listed below is a response on what a "tier" is from the US News FAQ's list on their college rankings:





What are tiers, and why are some schools listed in tiers and not number ranked?








In order to focus on the best schools, U.S. News publishes the numbered rank of approximately the top 50 percent of schools in all the categories. The remaining schools are placed in tiers or broad groups, based on their overall score in their category (the third and fourth tiers), and listed alphabetically.





Being a 4th tier college, indicates they are in the lower rankings of colleges and universities. This could be for several reasons such as retention of students, services offered to students, graduation rates, etc. Here is the FAQ list that can help you better understand the rankings.





http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college...





I hope this helps!
Reply:First tier is what you go to if you had really good grades in high school or college (when you're looking at graduate programs) and are going right from one to the other. Second tier is for those of us who didn't do extremely well +/or are non-traditional students so the competitive schools can't figure out how to evaluate us. By the time you get to 4th tier, you may get the first job but you're not going to have very good promotion potential. I know a lot of people don't want to hear it, but harder courses and harder work from the student in school does mean better career opportunities, both short and long-term.
Reply:First tier Universities, like the one I attended, are what you should look for. Anything after the second tier (and even the second tier I'd argue) is crap.