Well, I agree in the sense that if rankings had any validity Tulane should probably be higher. But by even saying that, I am presuming some common definition for what we are trying to measure. In truth, you have to get really philosophical and a bit abstract and ask questions like “What does it mean to be a great university” and “What is it exactly one is trying to rank”? That is why USNWR and every other ranking is worthless, unless you are trying to rank something very well defined and easily measured. So to be a bit trivial, if I only wanted to rank schools by size of endowment, that would be very easy and quite reliable, but it really wouldn’t tell us a lot about whether that was the school we wanted to choose. Same for if we only wanted to measure acceptance rate. Or is that really true? Is it fair to compare a school of 500 per incoming class that does essentially no advertising and so gets maybe 4,500 applications at $75 a pop, accepts 2,250 (50% rate) and enrolls the 500, to a school that has free applications, advertises heavily, gets 40,000 submissions, accepts 10,000 (25%) and enrolls 1500? Is acceptance rate really telling you anything about the quality of either school? Obviously the 2nd school is almost exactly what Tulane does and I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, when you look at their strategy in total, including the early notification, the large merit awards for many students, and several other key tactics, I think it is brilliant and has served the school extremely well post-Katrina.
So even the simplest comparisons can get complicated. Then you start trying to use multiple factors, as USNWR does, and you have to ask for each and every one “Is this really telling me anything about the quality of the undergraduate experience at that school?” Are we only talking about academics? Most college students I know would reject that notion completely. They would say that the campus atmosphere, the social life, the opportunities provided by the location, the service aspects, the research opportunities, the accessibility of the faculty, and many other factors are part of the equation, in whole or in parts. And it won’t be the same for any two students. So how does one deal with that? What is the value of going to school in New Orleans versus Davis, California or Winston-Salem, NC? USNWR doesn’t address that at all. And of course it cannot. So I think that it doesn’t take long to realize that the entire premise of trying to measure, and therefore rank, something that is as grand, and nebulous, a concept as what is the “best” school for undergraduate attendance is ridiculous and should never have been presented as such.
I used to say that the better students are mostly looking to be around other smart students. And I still think that is true in general. But I have come to realize that it oversimplifies it somewhat as well. But to the degree that it is true, you can look at test scores, high school GPA and class rank, AP or similar courses taken, and get some idea if that school has generally sharp students that are reasonably serious about academics or not. In general, on average, because that is all you can say. But again, that is a somewhat one-dimensional way of looking at it, even if that dimension is one of the more important ones.
So after that meandering trip through why your question probably shouldn’t even need to be answered, I will try anyway. Because of course in the current world a fair number do look at the rankings (USNWR anyway), and administrations do pay at least a little attention to it, although I wonder how much Tulane still worries about it since the school seems to be doing quite well with admissions despite the lack of love from those editorial bastards.
(To be continued)