'U.S. News' rankings embroiled in controversy—again

Second, first, third, first, fourth, second. These are the positions Yale has occupied in U.S. News & World Report's college rankings in the last six years alone. Such fluctuations have always been a source of controversy for the special U.S. News issue and the schools involved. This year, the situation was no different. In addition to the usual uproar over the rankings themselves, the magazine had to wrestle with the accidental early release of the 2001 list in several states.

SOURCE: U.S. NEWS Over the last six years, Harvard and—especially—Yale have seen significant fluctuations between rankings 1 and 4 on U.S. News and World Reports's annual listing of 'America's Best Colleges.'

The rankings, which named Princeton as the country's number one school, with Yale and Harvard tied at second, became public when supermarkets and bookstores in Vermont, Ohio, and other midwestern states placed copies of the magazines on their shelves prior to the planned Sept. 4 release date. "I saw the list early on the news," Leslie Oestreicher, TC '02, said.

While that incident was U.S. News' fault, the controversy each year over the seemingly arbitrary changes in the rankings has weighed heavily on the magazine's shoulders. The fact that such science powerhouses as the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and MIT ranked higher than Yale on last year's list surprised many, as did Princeton placing at the number one spot this year after failing to make the top four in 1999.

The drastic changes in the rankings each year have consistently prompted sharp criticism from university adminstrators.

"We shouldn't pay a lot of attention to the rankings," said Richard Shaw, Yale's Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid. "We don't put a lot of credence in the position we find ourselves in. The rankings vary year to year and lack coherence."

The inconsistencies emerge because U.S. News changes the criteria that it uses to calculate rankings every year.

Caltech came out on top in 1999 after the magazine decided for the first time to place heavy weight on the amount of money universities spent per student. U.S. News addressed the disparity in this year's issue: "Our method [last year] failed to take into account important factors bearing on how these dollars affect undergraduate education. Although big universities with sizable research programs often spend the most, a large share of those funds benefits graduate—not undergraduate—students." For this year's issue, the magazine's editors altered their formula to differentiate spending between the two groups—and Caltech and MIT's rankings dropped as a result.

A recent study conducted jointly by the Consortium of Financing Higher Education and Ronald Ehrenberg, an economist at Cornell, confirms that, at some universities, the list's impact is significant.

According to the study, a one-place drop in a school's ranking one year increases its admittance rate by 0.4 percent. In other words, if a school that needs to admit 15 percent of its applicants to fill its class moves from 5th place to 10th place, they need to admit 17 percent the next year.

What is perhaps most worrisome for university administrators, however, was the report's finding that even a small drop in the rankings often cause a school to become less selective and attract fewer students—and thus affect its rankings for the next year. Shaw, however, claims that the magazine has no effect on Yale's policies or on the University's application numbers.

"I don't think the rankings influence the number of applications because we're considered one of the top universities in the country," Shaw said. "Where one might see an influence is in schools who have greatly moved up in the rankings."

The exact position Yale earns, according to Shaw, is not important because of the caliber of the schools with which it is grouped. "We find ourselves in good company at the top of the list," he said.

Student opinion corroborates Shaw's statements. When applying to Yale, ranking was of little importance to Angela Early, MC '03. "To base Yale's value on the opinion of an outsider which doesn't take into account every aspect of an education at Yale is just really silly," she said.

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