US News and Noise

Every year, the release of the US News & World Report rankings sets off a chain reaction of articles. Schools that move up will send out emails highlighting their placement. Columnists will remind everyone that the rankings are a poor representation of the real quality of schools. Parents will pore over them, trying to make sense of what the changes might mean.

This year’s rankings will get considerably more articles than usual because of bigger than usual changes to the process and results. So I am adding to the pile! Here I’m going to focus on two things only:

1. Why and how did the rankings change more than usual this year?
2. If US News’s rankings are flawed, what should you look at instead?

To begin with, you should have a clear (or as clear as you can) understanding of how US News creates its rankings. More than twenty factors go into them, including graduation rate, class sizes, student debt, and even faculty salaries. One of the largest contributors to rankings are “peer reviews,” where top officials at other universities rate that university on a 1–5 scale. Note that standardized test scores are included for some schools, but not all schools use that metric.

You can see the full breakdown on their website here.

So What Changed?

This year’s changes were primarily aimed at social mobility after graduation. They increased the percentage of rankings based on amount of student loan debt, students on federal grants, and percent of graduates earning more than a high school graduate. They also slightly reduced the amount of impact university spending on salaries and students had, while increasing the role of faculty publications and number of faculty.

Because of these changes, many private schools with wealthier students dropped in rankings, while many public schools jumped up. For example, University of Chicago went from #6 to #12, Vanderbilt fell by five slots, American University by 33, and Wake Forest by 18, while Brown rose from #13 to #9, UNC Chapel Hill rose by seven, and UC Davis by ten.

Besides the change in rankings, Columbia University also decided to stop participating in the process, for the stated reason of the rankings having poor accuracy, though the decision came after one of their own professors submitted analysis showing the school had provided incorrect data to US News. Columbia is still listed by US News, but they use data from other sources to make their ranking. In fact, Columbia jumped six spots this year.

A handful of other universities or programs within universities have also stopped participating, and now more are hinting they will as well after this year’s changes in methodologies, prompting the endless discussion to continue: should anyone pay attention to US News’ rankings?

Of course you should. But just like the rankings themselves do, you should use it as one of many factors when picking a university.

What Should I Look at Instead?

Unfortunately, many parents, especially here in Taiwan, take university rankings as gospel. Schools advertise how many of their graduates end up in the top 20. College counselors are given bonuses based on these rankings. A university ranked in the teens is seen as a world apart from one way up in the 40s or 50s. In reality, for individual students, this is simply not the case. So much of the rankings are irrelevant to each individual student’s needs, and there are large parts of the university experience that are completely unrepresented in the ranking methodology.

It is impossible to come up with a single process to rank the plethora of universities. How do you compare big ones to small ones, private to public, schools that only focus on a few subjects versus ones that incorporate all of them? If you throw in an international university search (US News has a global ranking, but it’s even less useful), you can quickly see why looking to the rankings beyond getting a list of possibilities to investigate and ballpark understanding of their place in the world is a lost cause.

Instead, here are a few things to consider when looking at universities, to be used in conjunction with various rankings.

School Size. Larger universities dominate US News’ National Universities list, so they grab the most attention. A lot of people don’t even check the Liberal Arts listings, but I think they should. The most-cited benefit is the student-faculty ratio at a small school, but that’s not always fair — some big universities have departments with really small classes, and if you get into an honors college those will definitely have great ratios. However, in general small universities mean your classes are smaller. It also means that you have fewer professors in your major, so you can repeat professors and are more likely to build a strong relationship with one, leading both to a better letter of recommendation and to more accountability. The teaching quality will have a slight edge too, since these universities are slightly less research-focused. There’s also something to be said for knowing a significant number of people when you walk across campus that keeps you engaged and leads to more people checking in on you. Of course, small universities have their downsides: fewer opportunities, fewer specific course topics, and less research happening. The biggest impact is probably the lack of graduate programs, which ripples down into undergrad for some departments more than others (e.g. someone aiming for medical school more than someone aiming for law school). For many students, the trade-offs are worth it.

Department-specific info. While rankings exist for departments in specific fields, they’re very limited. Instead, you should look at a variety of data points. What research is being done? What opportunities does their department website discuss? For example, the School of Business at one school has a completely student-run coffee shop, another school’s College of Engineering has a startup incubator with tons of success stories, while the student paper run by the Journalism department at another university has won multiple awards. Further, you can look at the CVs of professors doing research in the field at the top universities and see where they graduated (though I’d recommend looking at younger professors only, since the landscape has changed a lot in twenty years). And while undergrad and grad programs don’t overlap much, learning about a department’s master’s/PhD programs will shed some light on undergrad as well. Keep in mind that the major you choose can, and often does, change while you’re there.

Geography. You can see all kinds of information about a university’s campus and student life, but don’t neglect the surrounding community. During university, students can develop all kinds of ties to where they live. Maybe they have a great internship, maybe they find a romantic partner and want to stay in the area, maybe they develop a real connection to a local place or organization. How close is the nearest airport? Hiking trail? Art museum? The student body might be very diverse, but the surrounding town might not, will this matter for you? Would being in a city be energizing, or distracting? For these reasons, thinking about things like the size and demographics of the university’s setting can be very important.

Finally, don’t forget the value of being a slightly bigger fish in a slightly smaller pond. Being at the middle of the pack in a more academically competitive university versus the top of one slightly less can actually be a disadvantage. Keep in mind that even after admission, you’re constantly competing for awards, internships, spots in research labs, and more. Just like struggling in an AP class to get a C isn’t always better than breezing to an A in the non-AP alternative in high school, the same goes for university competition. (My comparison here isn’t great, because classes at elite universities are rarely reported as being more difficult, but the competition from other students might be.)

A lot of people will look at acceptance rate as a measure of a good university. While comparing it between two similar universities might be good, there are a lot of factors that can skew that rate. In-state student policies, international versus US rates, and program-specific rates all make it a less reliable metric.

So, what should you look at? US News. Other rankings. The school’s website and social media. The city and neighborhood the university is in. The size of the school. The departments you’re interested in. Try to find a few alumni to chat with. And a million other things. What’s most important is different for every student, and unfortunately there are an almost unlimited amount of data points. In the end, though, remember that you’re not trying to find the perfect university. There is no single correct answer. In fact, some of the things that will affect you the most, like your friends and your favorite way to spend a Sunday and that one class that really got you interested in a subject, are completely immune to prediction. Instead your job is to use this overwhelming data to triangulate and narrow it down to 5–10 choices, all of which are going to be just great for you. Good luck.

Editing to add two links helpful for your mindset:

1. ADLC students (athletes, dean’s interest [donors, celebrities, etc.], legacy, and children of faculty/staff) have a much, much higher chance of getting into a university. At Harvard, “only 5% of applications come from ALDC students, [but] they make up about a third of acceptances.”
2. From 2008–2013, Stanford rejected 69% of students with a perfect SAT score. Of course, those with a perfect score had a higher chance of getting in, but it’s not a gold ticket.