US News & World Report Ranking

D_yer_Maker
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:48:42 +0000

SDonCC:

FWIW, my kids didn’t look at, know about or care about rankings. I did, to a certain extent even though I know that these lists are NOT an indicator of institutional quality. At least in our home, however, I never said a word to my kids about these lists, and they made their own decisions. It came entirely down to fit and particular interests.



Agreed. While I don’t really care about the lists, I still looked at them. I had nothing else to go by, so it was one way to keep me pre-occupied and not meddle with the application/selection process. For the record, I also frequently read my horoscope and I buy losing lottery tickets every blue moon when I feel “lucky” (which usually coincides with headline-making jackpots being up for grabs).

One of the most entertaining features of USN&WR rankings is, well, the rankings. The use of numeric rankings suggests that they’re relying on a very fine-edged objective measure. Number 23. Number 24…the numbers come out and people draw conclusions from them because they use numeric values and everyone can interpret numeric values! Right?

Still, being #24 instead of #23 does have meaning…not in any rational, valid way, but in the still important sense that there are 23 other colleges that are ahead of Oberlin. The innate desire to be #1 is that much more elusive with one more college in the way – regardless of the fact that nobody knows exactly what that means or what it takes to be #1. There’s a self-esteem or pride issue here, not because I think the rankings are meaningful but because so many other people think they’re meaningful. As a parent, it would be nice to respond to the blank stares when I tell people where my son is attending college with, “It’s #4 according to USN&WR.” Instead, I say, “It’s in Ohio,” which is nice but – if we can be honest with each other – is far less satisfying.

So, yes, the rankings mean something. Not because they should mean something or because they mean something in some objective way but because there are lots of people out there who don’t have the time or inclination or expertise to reach their own conclusions. And I don’t mean to belittle those people because, frankly, the guy who works on my car, or the tennis instructor, or my mother-in-law shouldn’t be wasting their time trying to keep track of what’s going on with thousands of colleges and universities. They are who the rankings are for…and it’s because there are so many more of these other people who rely on the rankings that the rankings become (somewhat) important in a regrettable way to those of us who know better than to regard them as being reliable, particularly when applied to a specific student.