The Story Behind the Rankings
Sometimes I worry that we're getting a little too popular over here at untrendy U.S. News. We've gotten quite a bit of attention over the past several months on our ranking of America's Best Colleges. Maybe you've seen some of the stories. The heads of a few liberal arts colleges have tried to organize a boycott of the rankings and received a lot of press coverage. They've accused us of all manner of sins, including oversimplifying complex institutions and, in one memorable quote, of exuding "real evil."
I take their point, except the evil part. The rankings aren't perfect, and every school has a unique character that is best explored in person. We're always looking for ways to get better information, and I'm the first to caution anyone not to make too much of top 10 lists. But, sorry to say, we don't produce the rankings for college presidents. We publish them for our readers, who've told us for more than 20 years that they find them very helpful when it comes to trying to make sense of a higher education system that is extremely expensive and largely unaccountable.
We're journalists—not social scientists, academic accreditors, or the Department of Education. We gather facts and do our best to explain what they mean. Sometimes we write stories; sometimes we put numbers in tables. For any of our rankings, we start by making sure we get the numbers right. Then we weight them in a formula that, in the case of colleges, is based on discussions with educators, parents, and students about what matters. The recipe isn't a secret: It's there for all to see in the magazine and in more detail at usnews.com.
I would like to think that the first reason we're popular is that we have a hard-earned reputation for accuracy. Each rankings issue is based on many thousands of data points, and very rarely do we get one wrong. In fact, U.S. News over the years has been the most important force in prodding colleges to make their own data more accurate and to come up with standard ways of reporting crucial information.
We work to keep the colleges honest—and the overwhelming majority are. New federal reporting requirements and other sources mean that we can vet the college-provided information. Even if a few schools don't want to cooperate, we have other ways to get the information and rank them (the proposed boycott had little or no effect on our surveys this year).
Our goal is to be accessible to everyone. A smart kid in an overcrowded public school gets the same shot at our basic information as a prep school kid with a personal guidance counselor. And we're looking at all 1,400 major accredited schools, not just the elite few that other college guides emphasize. In fact, far from promoting elitism—as we're sometimes accused of doing—the U.S. News rankings have helped expand the universe of top schools way beyond the Ivies. If you don't believe me, just ask places like Duke, Rice, Washington University in St. Louis, and Emory.
advertisement