Stop Letting College Rankings Choose Your School (And Why You Should Be Skeptical of Them)
- Lynn Hofstad
- Jul 1
- 6 min read
Back in the day, US News and World Report was a magazine. Now...it's basically just known for its rankings, college rankings to be specific. Anyone who has been through the college search process has seen the rankings, and any college listed high in the rankings is quick to tout their position. The list seems so clear and objective, that it is often taken as the definitive decision on the "prestige," importance, and value of a college. However, most people don't understand how the lists are created, and those who do are very skeptical of how helpful the rankings are for evaluating, much less choosing, a college.
How The Sausage Is Made
"...the more or less arbitrary factors that go into the ranking calculations often have little to do with what will be important to your educational experience."
If I asked you to guess the three most important factors in determining the ranking on the US News list, what would you guess? Any chance one of your answers is peer evaluation? Probably not. But unfortunately, that factor is heavily weighted when it comes to the US News rankings.
Peer Evaluation
Each year US News and World Report sends out surveys to college presidents, deans, admissions counselors, as well as high school counselors asking them to evaluate how they view the college in question. The responses to those surveys account for 20% of the ranking calculation. Keep in mind that those responding may or may not know anything about the college in question; they may or may not be competing in the rankings race with the college in question.
Consider a similar scenario, as a professor I often included a self-evaluation grade in the final grade. I asked students to assess their participation in the class. While I often saw the Dunning-Kruger effect rear its ugly head, few students complained about that aspect of the grade. Now consider if instead of allowing a student to assign themselves a grade, I had all of the other students in the class give them a grade. And that grade accounted for 20% of their final score and I would rank them against each other. Most students would balk at this. While it might be easy to assess someone with whom you did group work (ugh, the dreaded group project), there are often people in the class with whom you have never interacted, much less know their context and what motivated their participation or lack thereof. This holds true for the US News survey responses. In the words of Frank Bruni, “[Survey respondents] haven’t been in the classrooms of the colleges they’re grading. They’ve met only a few, if any, of most the college’s current students and recent graduates.”
This highlights the arbitrary factors that play a role in rankings. Whether or not a dean from a fellow college likes a college or not should not play a role in whether it is the best college for a particular student. Rankings perhaps speak more to people’s perception of a particular college, than its value to unique students.
Student Outcomes and Faculty Resources
The other two top factors in assessment are student outcomes (52%) and faculty resources and research (15%). Outcomes measure “student success.” In other words, how well does the college do at supporting and moving a student forward (and upward). Criteria such as retention rates (how many students stay for their whole college career), graduation rates, and social mobility are factored into this score. Faculty resources and research, meanwhile, assess how well faculty are compensated compared to other colleges, as well as class sizes taught by professors. While these might seem like objective, straightforward assessments, the issue is not the subjectivity; its that it's measuring the wrong thing.
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Notice also what is not assessed when it comes to the faculty resources category. While compensation is measured, effectiveness of teaching is not. While it can certainly help, being well-compensated or well-published does not a good teacher make. In fact, as colleges focus on factors that make them rise in the rankings, it can have an adverse effect on the quality of teaching. According to Jeffrey Selingo, “school’s efforts to rise in the rankings “actively pulled away from the teaching and learning experience."” By focusing on funding research, which helps colleges rise in the rankings, it often means less time and funding is devoted to fostering excellent teaching. The issue is that, particularly for undergraduates, the quality of the teaching matters. Access to high quality teaching and fostering of mentorship are often correlated to a positive collegiate educational experience. Selingo asserts, "Decades of research have shown that the connection students make on campus are essential to their success and well-being, both before and after graduation." Unfortunately, the rankings don’t help you assess how good the teaching is at a particular institution.
Manipulation
Another troubling aspect of the ranking system is how it can be manipulated. Jeffrey Selingo in his book Who Gets In and Why, outlines Northeastern’s rise from a ranking of 164 to 98 over the course of less than 10 years. Northeastern knew which metrics they could finesse to influence their ranking. And they aren’t alone. Recently US News and World Report has shifted its criteria over the years in efforts to mitigate manipulation (or just to stave off criticism). Metrics that had been considered, such as alumni giving, class size and acceptance rates are no longer factored into the rankings. While they don’t explain why these are no longer used, one can speculate (me!) that it is due to manipulation of these metrics and the ensuing criticism.
Why Rankings Matter — And Why They Shouldn't
All this matters because, like it or not, rankings have impacted how people perceive and search for colleges. Prestige has come to be assigned based on these rankings. Perceptions have been shaped to believe that a higher ranking means a “better” school. When in actuality the rankings themselves are largely based on perception—the perception of administrators at other universities.
Perhaps I have convinced you about the arbitrary nature of these rankings, but if I haven’t, I hope to at least steer you to not focus on them during the college search. It doesn’t matter what a college is ranked if it isn’t a good fit for a student. It can be #1, but if it isn’t a fit, the student won’t thrive. Perhaps it is best summed up by Jeffrey Brezel, former Dean of Admissions at Yale University:
"…the formulas used to rank schools are based on factors that in themselves are often irrelevant to individual students. Their composite scores reflect alumni giving rates, student to-teacher ratios, median SAT scores, persistence to graduation, admissions selectivity and other data that provide little information about specific program strengths, honors programs or the general way in which the school lifts and supports student aspirations….Rankings tend to ignore the very criteria that may be most important to an applicant, such as specific academic offerings, intellectual and social climate, ease of access to faculty, international opportunities and placement rates for careers or for graduate and professional school."
We all love lists (at least I do); we love the clarity of knowing how one thing compares to another. My spouse jokes that I can’t buy a home appliance without first consulting Consumer Reports. The issue with college ranking though, is that the college experience is individual. What makes a good college experience for one person might make it dreadful for the next. Colleges should be ranked by an individual based on the factors that are important to that unique person, based on factors that reflect their “why.” Everyone’s college list is and should be unique. Don’t let the national rankings fool you into thinking that the #1 college is the best college for everyone. Figure out your “why” and build your individualized ranking list based on those factors.
Need help creating a college list that reflects your "why"? Place and Path College Consulting is here to help.
Jeff Brezel, "Beyond the College Rankings"
Brennan Barnard and Rick Clark, The Truth about College Admission, pg. 94.
Frank Bruni, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, pg. 94.
Jeffrey Selingo, Dream School, pg. 158.
Jeffrey Selingo, Dream School, pg. 154.
Jeffrey Selingo, Who Gets In and Why, pg. 74-79.
Recently US News and World Report stopped using class size as a criterion. Colleges had been offering just enough classes at the small size threshold to improve their ranking score, but most undergraduate class sizes remained large.
I encourage you to read the whole of Brezel’s essay. It is excellent and succinctly explains the multitude of problems for both students and colleges that arise from rankings. Beyond the College Rankings | Undergraduate Admissions
