College Ranking in U.S. News Report

To the Editors:

Imagine yourself a high-school senior from a small town, the top student in your class with an SAT score above 1400. You are beginning your college search but know little about schools and have less time to learn. You will therefore likely begin with a well-known and readily-available source such as the U.S. News and World Report rankings of America’s Best Colleges that provides basic comparative information about a variety of institutions. With this information, you will begin to narrow your focus on those schools that appear to be strongest and where you are likely to be admitted.
A quick review of the top liberal arts colleges tells you that you are a competitive candidate at any of the schools listed. Realizing this, you will likely scrutinize the schools at the top of the list. As you would suspect, these schools are highly selective and have the top reputations, most resources, and best-compensated faculties. After further researching these schools, you apply to several in the top ten and maybe a fallback school or two somewhere between eleven and fifteen.
What would you find in the unlikely event that you venture down to number twenty-three? You will note that Oberlin College is not in the top ten in any of the categories I discussed above (our highest ranking is a tie for thirteenth) and trails each of the top six schools in every category. Although you know little about Oberlin, you ask yourself what are the chances that a school ranked fifty-second in financial resources, forty-third in alumni giving, and thirty-third in faculty resources is one of the elite institutions of its kind? Logically concluding that this is highly unlikely, you focus your attention elsewhere. Oberlin College loses the fight for your allegiance before the battle begins.
Variations of this scenario are doubtless repeated thousands of times annually by the best students in the country. While we can encourage, as Richard Juang does, these students to evaluate each institution’s “particular environment,” they will (and must, given their time and expertise limitations) use the U.S. News rankings, as will other parties such as professors, administrators, and donors. If for no other reason, therefore, we cannot and should not ignore the rankings.
Yet this is hardly the only reason to pay attention. The foundation of an elite institution of higher learning is the abilities, skills and knowledge of its students, faculty, and staff and the depth of its resources; without these pillars, no amount of “seriousness and dedication” will lead to long-term preeminence. The rankings evaluate the strength of institutions in each of these categories through a variety of relatively-objective measures. While the individual measures may be an imperfect and indirect gauge of the categories, as a group the categories provide a general picture of the strength of an institution. While the highest ranked institution may not be the best, it is quite likely significantly better than number ten and almost certainly clearly superior to number twenty. Were Oberlin outside the top ten in a category or two, we could more justifiably argue that the rankings are somehow skewed. When we find ourselves outside the top ten in all the above categories and as low as fifty-second in one, however, the argument rings hollow.

–Kevin Boland
OC ’89