Breaking Down College Rankings and What You Really Need to Know
Larry Hunter, Ph.D.
Director, Institutional Research
For 40 years, U.S. World News and Report (U.S. News) has published a list of college rankings that prospective students, parents, school counselors, and the colleges themselves use as a measurement against other universities. The ranks overall best school, but subsections such as best business school or best college for social mobility.
Today, the well-known list joins other annual publications like the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and even Princeton Review.
For three years, the U.S. News rankings were based on reputational surveys completed by college presidents. In 1983, 1,308 presidents received the survey, but U.S. News only had a 50 percent response rate. It wasn’t until 1999 that the publication started to standardize the data used to calculate the school rankings.
Each year schools submit information in order to be considered for a ranking. Capital provides information on enrollments, retention rates, graduation rates, admissions, transfer admissions, alumni giving, faculty and staff, student services, student organizations, financial aid, finance, class size, employment data for our graduates, and graduate school data for our graduates.
College decisions should be made using a multitude of factors. Students and families should discuss academic goals, financial plans, and campus community before comparing college rankings.
Some weight should be put on the rankings, but I also think a more holistic approach is the best way to make a decision. Using the rankings along with other resources such as the College Board survey, Peterson’s survey, College Navigator (a web site provided by the National Center for Education Statistics), and then other things like campus visits should give parents and students a good base of information to work with when it comes time to make the decision. In short, I would suggest students put about 25 percent on rankings, 25 percent on other sources, 25 percent on campus visits, and 25 percent on intangibles such as emotional attachment to the school. Don’t be afraid to trust your gut feeling about whether or not the school is a good fit.
In recent years, college rankings have undergone some scrutiny and public backlash. Columbia University withdrew from the U.S. News ranking in 2022-2023 and law schools such as Yale University and Harvard University stopped submitting their data.
Despite some of the bad publicity that rankings have received, I still think they are a good source of information for parents and students. The information behind the rankings is helpful, not necessarily the rankings. The data provided by schools is data that is submitted to the federal government, so students and families can be guaranteed that the data submitted in reliable.
I don’t think undergraduate institutions are affected very much when other schools pull out of the rankings. There have always been schools who do not participate for one reason or another. I don’t think it’s much of an issue to those schools that do participate. I think a lot of schools acknowledge there is controversy involved, but I think most of them decide the exposure and publicity outweigh the controversy.
While college rankings can be helpful in the college decision process, it’s important to note that they should be just one piece of the puzzle. Only time will tell if the 40-year-old tradition stands the test of time or fizzles out as both colleges and prospective students look for a benchmark to measure success.
Capital University (U.S. News 2022 Rankings)
- #39 in Regional Universities Midwest
- #38 in Best Value Schools
- #41 in Best Colleges for Veterans