Why Has College Admissions Become So Competitive? :The Rankings Game

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The article doesn’t try to dissuade you if prestige is important to you in selecting a college—you have lots of company. What it does do, however, is discuss many other important dimensions to consider in selecting colleges. The college admissions process should be about fit—the fit between a student and a college. Finding a good fit does not mean that there is just one perfect school for a student—it means exploring an array of factors that can enhance a student’s academic and personal success. Many factors besides prestige go into determining fit . You may find, that you are making the same choices as you would have before, but your choices will be more informed. You may even find yourself seriously considering other options of which you had been unaware. Either outcome is fine— the goal is to help you understand as much as possible about yourself, the college admissions process, and colleges themselves, so that you can make the best choices for you.

I am extremely skeptical that the quality of a university—any more than the quality of a magazine—can be measured statistically. However, even if it can, the producers of the U.S. News rankings remain far from discovering the method.   -Gerhard Casper, former president of Stanford University

The Ranking Game 

A major contributor to the mystique of selective colleges has been the annual rankings of colleges published by U.S. News & World Report. The magazine’s first rankings, published in 1983, were based solely on surveys of college administrators. Over time, the rankings became so popular that they outgrew the magazine itself. Each August U.S. News & World Report publishes a separate guidebook, “America’s Best Colleges,” that features college rankings based on a mix of reputation and statistical data about the colleges, as well as information and advice about applying to college. The yearly rankings, though, are what drive the sales of “America’s Best Colleges” and generate great attention among readers and great controversy among those who believe the ranking process is fundamentally flawed. One critic, Lloyd Thacker, a prominent voice for reform of the college admissions process, refers to the ranking business as the “ranksters.”

While president of Stanford University, Gerhard Casper expressed his concern about the rankings to the editor of U.S. News & World Report as follows: “As the president of a university that is among the top-ranked universities, I hope I have the standing to persuade you that much about these rankings—particularly their specious formulas and spurious precision—is utterly misleading.”

What Goes into the Rankings

Twenty-five percent of a college’s ranking in the U.S. News survey is based on reputational ratings it receives in the poll of college presidents, provosts, and admissions deans that the magazine conducts each year. These administrators are simply asked to rate the academic quality of undergraduate programs at schools with the same mission as their own (for example, liberal arts colleges or research universities) on a 1–5 scale from “marginal” to “distinguished,” with an option to respond “don’t know.” Many of those who receive the questionnaire acknowledge that they lack the detailed knowledge of other colleges that they would need to respond meaningfully. A number of college presidents, mostly in a set of liberal arts colleges known as the Annapolis Group, have signed a statement refusing to participate in the survey either by rating other colleges or, in some cases, by refusing to submit their data in the format the magazine desires.