September 22, 2011
College rankings are vapid. So far as I can tell, rankings only exist so that school rivals can hold something over each other every year, and then rankings fade back into pointlessness. They are important for that brief week after U.S. News & World Report releases them and then they are never referenced again. And that is because they are inherently flawed and entirely useless.
When I started my college search, I found Hamilton because it happened to be off of Interstate 90, which my family and I were driving down while on vacation. It was out of sheer luck that I discovered the school. Actually, it was out of sheer luck that I found all of my schools. I applied to nine schools, of which Hamilton was the second best, both by rankings and by general knowledge from people experienced in the college process. I never checked where it ranked against the other schools. And while most applicants will compare their schools’ rankings, it seems that rankings are only used to compile a list of similar schools to look into.
College rankings are good for people who need to start somewhere, but past that, it is unlikely that rankings would ever make or break someone’s college decision. That is, unless the difference was radical, like that between Hamilton College (ranked No. 17) and Gettysburg College (ranked No. 47). Regardless, people should not base their decisions solely off of college rankings because they’re flawed.
On this year’s list of Top National Universities, University of Texas-Austin and Yeshiva University share spot 45. Beyond their urban locations, the two schools are entirely different. University of Texas has 38,420 students enrolled; Yeshiva has 2,833. On a list of best overall athletics, U of T ranks No. 12; Yeshiva doesn’t even break into the top 125. University of Texas is an affordable, state university, whereas Yeshiva University is an expensive, private institution that proclaims, “YU has been dedicated to melding the ancient traditions of Jewish law and life with the heritage of Western civilization.” One mascot is a long-horn and the other a Maccabee (the biblical Jewish rebel group). And ,yet, they’re both ranked No. 45.
I will say this with overwhelming certainty: since the creation of both of these schools, not a single person has ever seriously considered attending both. No high school senior has wondered late at night, “God, do I want to call You Yahweh for four years or refer to You as a sweet baby Jesus?”
The schools are so drastically different that any attempt to even compare them is ridiculous. It is like trying to debate whether hockey or golf is a better sport. Hockey is a team sport played on ice, in which the main goal is to score goals and assault the other team in the process. Golf is a single player game on luxury courses about reading greens and choosing which iron to use. The sports appeal to two, widely different sets of people: the aggressive types and the strategic types. College rankings ignore the inherent personal preference involved in choosing a school and lump every institution of learning into the same basket.
Different students want different things. No one survey can accurately reflect what school is best for everyone. In an article for the The New Yorker, Macolm Gladwell expresses similar frustration with college rankings and writes about a service called “the Ranking Game.” What the “game” does is allow the player to rank law schools against each other, using whatever criteria said player finds important. If the ‘prestige’ of the school means nothing to you, whereas the cost and post-graduation employment rate are important, then you weigh those accordingly. Whatever the applicant finds important is rated, not what U.S. News & World Report thinks is important.
College rankings inherently lack this ability to measure what each student really wants or what is important in a college. Harvard, Princeton and Yale will forever stay in the top three spots just because they are Harvard, Princeton and Yale. At a certain point, rankings become more about which name sounds familiar than about which school educates their students best. While Ivy League schools are certainly good academic schools, if they were ever to falter it wouldn’t matter because of their Ivy League status.
So while it is nice that we have passed Colgate in the college rankings, does it even matter?