<p>The stats can be very useful in deciding which colleges to apply to. I see some students applying to places that are way out of their league (and vice versa). Frankly, some students are wasting their time applying to Harvard and others have no idea that they really do have the stats to apply to a truly selective university. US News is very open about how they arrive at their rankings, and if you don’t agree with their methods that’s your choice. Some schools have recently made a big show about not getting involved in the competitiveness of US News rankings, but, believe me, they’re still working hard to up their scores. University of Chicago announced a couple of years ago that they had thoughtlessly misreported some of their stats and they went up about 10 ranks the next year. You can bet that they were just learning how to “work” the system. However, there is a wealth of data there that needs to be mined by high school students and their parents. For instance, if a school only graduates about 40% of its incoming freshmen, that should be a red flag. If the average SAT score is much lower (or higher) than yours, then you maybe should look at other colleges. Knowing these facts really can help people make wiser decisions about where they spend a very important four years of their lives. Still, there might be very good reasons to leave service academies out of the ranking altogether. The reasons for attending an academy are way different from deciding whether to go to State U or to Cornell.</p>