Ranking of Colleges

Though many people put a lot of faith in the ranking of colleges, usually favoring the top college lists formulated by magazines like U.S. News and World Report, the ranking of colleges really isn’t much of a science. That’s not to say that formulas aren’t involved. Depending on the publication, a large range of different considerations can be taken into account. Some of the standard criteria are class size, percentage of professors with advanced degrees, and the percentage of graduates which are either employed or pursuing further education within six months of graduation. These are relatively cut-and-dried numbers; there isn’t much of a fudge factor or much room for interpretation. However, once those ranking colleges get beyond these sorts of factors things start to get a little fuzzier.

For example, some reviews take into account the number of books in a university’s library when computing the school’s ranking. How many people are really concerned with how many books are in the stacks when they’re choosing a school? Other considerations which make these designations shaky is different adjustments based on the school’s reputation, which is a particularly subjective, regionally-dependent criteria. Some schools will have particularly strong reputations in one area of the country while their reputations are completely different on the opposite coast.

Though the ranking of colleges gives you some idea of how different universities are positioned, by no means allow how a school is ranked to be a deciding factor in your choice of university. If you’re accepted to schools A and B and A has a slightly higher ranking but B has a lot better feel to it, go to school B and don’t worry about school A’s ranking. If a school fits you it’s much more important than if it’s ranked highly, especially since the rankings are somewhat subjective and arbitrary to begin with.

As a general rule of thumb, allow the ranking of colleges to give you ideas of different options for school, but don’t allow the rankings to discredit or rule out any schools. Rankings are somewhat helpful in that they do give prospective students a general idea of the highly regarded universities in the country; though the #4 school probably isn’t obviously better than the #6 school, the #6 school is probably of a noticeably higher caliber than the #300 school. Sometimes colleges that you wouldn’t have otherwise considered show up on the ranking lists and could be definitely worth your consideration, just remember that there is some wiggle room in the rankings and that they don’t always reflect how things really are.