U.S. News and World Report Is Not My College Counselor
By Daniel Groberg '07
Editor
I do not want to go to Princeton. That’s right, I said it. Sure, it’s “America’s Best College,” at least according to the recently released U.S. News and World Report rankings, but I don’t want to go there. I’d rather not go to Harvard either; and NYU, “America’s hottest school?” Cross it off my list. I don’t deny that these schools provide a fantastic education for somebody, but that person simply isn’t me. In an age of unprecedented college-related stress, reinforced by a system of rankings based solely on quantitative variables, the concept of the “right college” has seemingly been forgotten.
In the class of 2010 at Harvard, 96% of accepted students were in the top 10% of their high school class. 25% of accepted students scored above a 1580 on their SATs. Only 8.7% of all applicants were accepted. All three of those statistics helped Harvard earn its spot as the second best school in the nation. But not all of those statistics may actually matter to you. As you embark on this journey to decide upon the next four years of your life, you should decide what you want from a college, and no ranking list can help determine personal taste.
U.S. News and World Report uses fifteen quantitative variables to determine its ranking list, including graduation rates, selectivity rates, alumni giving, and the percent of faculty who work full time at each college. Each indicator is assigned a respective weight based on the magazine’s own judgment. Colleges are ranked based on their composite weighted scores. The magazine does not publish its exact ranking formula, but it does say that “greater weight [is placed] on the “outcome” measures of quality (such as graduation rate) and [less on] the “input” measures (such as entering test scores and financial resources). Because of this, a school filled with highly qualified yet transient students may have a lower ranking than a school with less qualified students who stay at the same school all four years and receive a degree from that school.
What you have to decide is whether these magazines’ opinions of what elements lend to a “better” school should have any impact on your college decision. The magazine’s weighting system may be completely different from your own. You may care a lot about class sizes and not care at all about the average alumni-giving rate. You might not think that a school endowment determines the quality of education offered.
You also might care about qualifications other than the quantitative ones used in the ranking formula. U.S. News and World Report does not use any categorical or subjective information in its rankings. You might prefer a school on the coast, or a school in a large city instead of a small rural town. You might be looking for a school with an especially strong music program; specialty schools, such as arts schools, aren’t even considered in the rankings. You might want a school that does not use teaching assistants in its classes. You might learn better in a discussion-based class instead of a lecture hall. You might be looking for more of a community-oriented atmosphere, where everyone knows each other and offers a friendly greeting as they pass between classes. You might not want to go to a high-powered school like Princeton, and prefer a more laidback atmosphere. Perhaps you want to go to a party school, or a school that will help you get into law school, or one with a nice campus. Yet none of these aspects make any appearance in the ranking mechanism used to order schools. Choosing a school based on its ranking would inevitably mean ignoring many of the factors that determine whether or not a student applies to a certain college.
In a high-intensity atmosphere like Choate where competition is a part of every-day life and where there is a constant pressure to be outstanding, it’s easy to get caught up in the ranking-craze. For some, being able to say that they go to the number-one ranked school is like a badge of honor. Or maybe you will settle for nothing short of the best. But this sort of attitude will inevitably land you in a school where you very well may be unhappy. Face it: the kind of school that works for you might be completely different from the kind that works for someone else, or the kind that magazines favor. When choosing a school, decide what is important to you, whether it be class size or skiing potential. Remove ranking lists from the picture, and focus on finding what you want from a college.
