<p>Proud Dad, those asked to rate peer insitutions are also asked to only rate those they are familiar with. If they aren’t familiar with a peer institution, they are asked to give a “don’t know” mark. </p>
<p>That said, some raters will rate peer schools they aren’t qualified to rate and others will overrate or underrate peer institutions based on personal bias. However, that is not the intent of the PA and I am fairly confident that such occurances aren’t very common. Besides, the USNWR discards outliers, so oddities are likely to be spotted and rejected.</p>
<p>However, I agree with you on two points:</p>
<p>1) Statistics sometimes do lie. One should never rely solely on statistics and universities (or colleges) cannot be compared statistically.</p>
<p>2) “Fit” is one of the most important concepts students should consider when forming their application list.</p>