College Rankings And You

"College XYZ Is the #1 Ranked College In America!"

How often do we see this? Colleges often use these badges of recognition to advertise for prospective students, and students looking for colleges ask frequently about rankings.

The only trouble is: whose rankings?

There seems to be this perception that XYZ College is the #1 College in the Country or the #1 College in the country for Business Majors or for... well, you name it. But what does that #1 mean? Does it mean that they have a higher percentage of students that are employed immediately out of school? Or that their students graduate on time in higher numbers than similar schools? (Similar schools... that's always a good one. Only compare yourself to schools that are similar in affiliations, size, location, athletics, demographics... you choose the statistic that works best for your comparison.) Or does it mean that the 5 students who graduated out of the program of 1,102 got really good jobs (but never mind about the rest of the students)? Or that the faculty has the most experience/highest degrees/most published material/most prominent backgrounds? Or.... this list could go on and on and on... there are so many variables that can make a school or the program the "best" that any number of schools could claim that #1 spot depending on the variable being looked at.

And then we get into different ranking agencies. The Princeton Review and US News may have very different ideas of what goes into a college ranking... again giving a maximum number of schools the opportunity to be #1 at... well... something!

I see so many students and parents getting caught up into this "must go to high ranked school" mindset... but I wonder how many of them understand the ranking system and what goes into it? Beyond that I have serious issues with students choosing a college based on it's ranking rather than how they felt on the campus, whether they liked the course offerings and if the overall school was a good fit. Believe me, it's not worth struggling through college and hating every step of the way just to go to a school that some organization somewhere along the lines said was the #1 school in something.

So, as a response to the students and parents who ask for Anycollege to post college rankings I have to say that's a next to impossible order because 1) whose rankings do we use and can we trust them? and 2) there are better ways to choose a school.

What has stuck with me on this point for many years was from when I was looking at schools myself. The admissions counselor said to me "I guess we're ranked in the top three theatre schools in the country, but I don't know who said that. For all I know it was the Moms of [College Name] Theatre Students who decided that, so I don't put much stock into it. Why don't you just look at the program and decide for yourself."

I didn't end up going to that school, but it was the best advice on looking at colleges I ever had.