Weighted Ranking

Sometimes it can be difficult to choose between several options. There are many criteria to consider. No option is perfect. There is no obvious winner.

Weighted Ranking is a method to help you decide between options when there is no obvious winner. Each option is judged by a number of criteria; each criterion is assigned a weight, or degree of importance.

An overall score is calculated for each option, and then the options are displayed in descending order of their overall score. The top-scoring option is your best choice.  The Introduction to Wisdom course has a detailed explanation of how to do the calculations.

An excellent example of a weighted ranking is the Forbes America’s Best Colleges List. Forbes explains the criteria (or categories, in their terminology), and the relative weight of each criterion, used to rank the schools.

You may also find interesting the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, which uses this methodology.

Note that the top-scoring colleges and universities in these rankings are not necessarily the best schools for you. They were not ranked with your personal needs and preferences in mind. For example, criteria such as the variety of organic vegetarian meals, or the quality of the cognitive science program, might be important to you, but are not included in these rankings. You may need to create your own.