<p>The book, “Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College” by Andrew Ferguson points out the silliness of college rankings by mags like US News and World Report. My favorite example is the tactic used by many schools: (1) do lots of slick direct marketing to get your application count up; (2) so that you can reject more kids, which lowers your acceptance rate; and (3) therefore raises your ranking. I know that my S was absolutely barraged by schools calling him day and night throughout his Junior year and into his Senior year, asking him to apply (the calls, of course, were mainly from attractively-voiced co-eds). The calls were almost exclusively private schools, including many very prestigious schools that one would think did not need to advertize, especially to a demographic (my S) that their schools are seemingly saturated with. This was not one or two calls per week, I am talking about up to 3-4 CALLS PER DAY. Being a marketer, this confounded me (this seemed to be a waste of marketing dollars) until I read “Crazy U” and figured out what was going on. Of course, our mailbox overflowed daily with incredibly expensive, glossy brochures. Some schools sent more than a dozen mail items over the course of a few months.</p>