There are so many college rankings these days it can be hard to keep track (everyone is #1 in something, right?).
Anyone familiar with the college application process is aware of the influence “Best Colleges” rankings can have over parents and students. While these rankings certainly offer a place to start when researching schools, it is important to note a few things about the type of data used to compile these lists. The top ten colleges don’t move up and down all that much from year to year, and nearly all the top 20 schools have brand name cache. In short, rankings aren’t going to help students discover that gem of a liberal arts school in the Pacific Northwest or a unique Southern school with a community feel, and that is part of the problem: rankings are never able to provide a comprehensive picture of all the options available to students.
Many feel that rankings create unhealthy stress and overcompetition for prospective students and their parents. Some experts don’t believe that the U.S. News rankings accurately represent information about colleges. According to Katie Burns, former Senior Assistant Director of Admissions at MIT, methodologies for college rankings are based on a limited criteria. Not only that, but sometimes a huge portion of ranking is made up of the opinion of a few high-up individuals at universities across the country. For instance, 20% of a school’s evaluation depends on “Peer Assessment” where top officials like Presidents, Provosts, Deans of Admissions, etc. rate the academic quality of peer institutions with which they are familiar. It is more useful to think of rankings as a snapshot of what schools have to offer, and to do a deep dive and understand the data. Harry Feder explains in a recent Washington Post article, that reducing the various school quality factors to a single measure are problematic because U.S. News seeks to rank in volume with insufficient investigative resources and its criteria fail to capture the nuances of the complex institutions.