Harvard Ties For Top Ranking

High-schoolers gearing up for the college admissions circus have a new sheaf of stats to spend the next eight months poring over, but proud Harvard loyalists can breathe easy: The College is still “America’s Best,” at least according to the 2005 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s influential rankings, released today.

Last year, the University left behind a five-year drought of second- and third-place finishes to take the highest spot in the magazine’s “National Universities” category. This year Harvard remains on top—and like last year, it shares that honor with Princeton, which also received an overall score of 100. The tied Ivies bested such perennial competitors as Yale (with 99 points), the University of Pennsylvania (95), and Duke, MIT and Stanford, all tied at 94 points.

Harvard also placed admirably in special categories such as best value (third place, after Princeton and Cal Tech) and average student debt (at $8,830, the University was beaten out only by Princeton, the University of Texas-El Paso and California Institute of Technology).

The overall ratings, in which Harvard was compared to 247 other American universities “that offer a wide range of undergraduate majors as well as master’s and doctoral degrees,” were judged on indicators including peer assessment, student retention, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving rate.

Harvard successfully defended its first-place showing with a stellar set of ratings.

The University earned a 4.9 out of 5.0 peer assessment rating, based on a survey of the academic world on the “intangibles” that distinguish a school. Harvard took first place in graduation and retention (shared with Princeton), with 97 percent of first-years retained and a 98 percent graduation rate, as well as having the lowest acceptance rate (10 percent, also matched by Princeton).

And Harvard rounded out its overall qualifiers with a second-place showing in faculty resources (the University of Pennsylvania took first, while Princeton was given third) and fourth place in selectivity, based on acceptance rates as well as enrolled students’ high school records and performance on standardized tests (tied by Cal Tech; beaten by Yale, in first place, and Princeton and MIT tied for second).

Harvard also appeared on three of the magazine’s “programs to look for” lists, which are not ranked: “Senior Capstone,” given for special projects in the final undergraduate year; “Writing in the Disciplines”; and “Undergraduate Research / Creative Projects.”

The rankings, which U.S. News has promoted for 21 years as an objective index by which to navigate the sea of American higher education, have long been criticized as arbitrary.

“It’s always flattering to be appreciated,” Director of Undergraduate Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73 said last year of Harvard’s first first-place finish in five years. “But there are a lot of better reasons to choosing a college besides ordinal ranking.”

Harvard’s admissions officials could not be reached for comment last night.

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.