Making Sense of College Rankings
Susan Thurman, Ph.D.
Scholarship Director, NSHSS

(pictured at right with daughter Erin, a junior at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia)

Each fall college-bound students and their parents are bombarded with a confusing mix of college ratings – the best this and the best that.  Several educational organizations survey and come up with ratings each year, such as “U.S. News & World Report,” “Newsweek-Kaplan College Guide,” and the “Princeton Review,” all of which are different.   Colleges that make these lists proudly promote their rankings in their recruiting materials and ones that don’t or that drop in ratings from previous years often take issue with the methodology behind the ratings—that the ranking are too subjective and imprecise. So how do you make sense of them in selecting a college?

The most important step is to review the criteria and methodology for the rankings, which should be spelled out up front. Keep in mind that a certain amount of subjectivity is inherent in the evaluations and. that some of the ratings systems omit small or specialty colleges. Determine which criteria are most important to you and keep in mind that these numbers don’t really equal the college experience – you need to visit the school, review its website, communicate with students there, examine the course offerings and faculty credentials before deciding.  The lists can help you decide whether a school is right for you, but you should never select a school based solely on these ratings.  Use them as a guide only.  For more information on rankings and selecting colleges, visit www.usnews.com; http://www.collegeboard.com/; and www.princetonreview.com.

To briefly review some of these annual rankings, those of “The U.S. News & World Report” often hold the most weight with the colleges and the public.  This ranking is a formula based on peer assessment, freshman retention rates, graduation rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, SAT/ACT scores, student/faculty ratio, financial resources, and alumni giving. The editors assign a weight and ranking to each of the categories in selecting the top colleges. Some say the results are inherently skewed in favor of private colleges because these typically are better funded.  For example, the 2005 list of “Best National Universities” includes in the top 10:

1)  Harvard/Princeton tie
3)  Yale
4)  University of Pennsylvania
5)  Duke/Stanford tie
7)  California Institute of Technology/MIT tie
9)  Columbia/Dartmouth

The “Princeton Review” annually ranks the “Best” 361 colleges in the U.S., based on feedback from counselors, students, parents and educators, and Princeton Review staff, with data collected on over 2,000 schools. They don’t use a mathematical calculation or formula in making their selections of schools to rank but do use one to rank the selected schools.  They also rank schools based on student surveys in a number of non-academic areas, such as “Best Professor”: St. John’s College (NM); “Best Food”: Bowdoin College; “Best Dorms”: Loyola College in Maryland; “Happiest Students”: Stanford University, “Best Jock School”: University of Florida, and “Best for Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians”: Hampshire College.  Check out the website at www.princetonreview.com for a host of other “Best’s.”

Additionally, “Newsweek-Kaplan College Guide” lists its “25 Hottest Colleges,” and admits that its ratings are based on the fact that the schools listed are “creating buzz among students, school officials and long-time observers of the admissions process.” Some of their selections include:

Hottest for Rejecting You:  Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Hottest for Science:  University of California, San Diego, La Jolla

Hottest for Liberal Arts:  Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota

Hottest Small State University:  College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia

Hottest Big State University:  Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

Just remember, though, that a college is more than the sum of its rankings, and go for the school that best suits your own needs.