The Last First

In a report issued last week by US News and World Report that ranked schools according to popularity, Harvard topped the list, defeating all other schools in the top 50 percentile of colleges nationwide. The ranking was based on the percentage of students accepting a school’s offer of admission—otherwise known as a school’s yield—and Harvard’s figure of 76.2 percent set the mark last year. This ranking list is the latest in a series published by US News. Harvard was also recently ranked first in the “National Universities” category of US News’s Best Colleges 2009. Despite the favorable recognition these distinctions are meant to convey, they provide distorted information to prospective students and potentially influence admissions office decisions at colleges trying to game the rankings. For this reason, Harvard should remove itself from the publication’s annual rankings and use its reputation to encourage high school students to rely more on their own research and less on standardized rankings.

In the current era of college admissions, with applications rising and acceptance rates plummeting at schools across the country, US News rankings provide an inaccurate representation of school quality that influences far too many students. As admissions get more competitive, prospective applicants apply to an increasing number of schools, and as a result have relied more and more on these rankings. The central role that these rankings play, however, can lead students to make their college decision based on a superficial ranking rather than by determining which school is the best match. This is especially true in the case of the yield statistic, which Dean Fitzsimmons commented was a “slippery figure in many ways,” and is not a good indicator of a school’s popularity or whether it is a good fit for students. Instead of referring to these rankings, students should do their own research and take into consideration available statistics such as acceptance rates, in addition to other factors such as campus visits, when making college decisions.

The influential role of US News and World Report’s rankings stems from the nearly universal participation of schools in the United States, as only a handful of institutions choose to remove themselves from ranking consideration each year. Despite an increase in the number of schools opting out of the publication’s annual rankings, the majority of these are less well-known institutions than Harvard, and as a result the authority of US News has not been called into question on a national scale. Harvard should use its name and influence to diminish the importance of these rankings by removing itself from them, an action that would certainly have an effect on the way in which potential applicants view these rankings nationwide. Moreover, Harvard’s position as one of the nation’s preeminent universities would inspire other schools to follow suit, in the same way that Harvard’s financial aid initiative last year inspired Yale and Stanford, among others, to implement similar policies.

The world of higher education is so diverse that ranking schools according to a standardized system fails to provide an accurate representation of many schools. These rankings have become increasingly important in many applicants’ decisions, and likely lead to students to make decisions that are not in their best academic interests. While Harvard should remove itself from these rankings, it should continue to provide applicants with information to make them informed about the college application process. In the end, all students are going to rely upon statistics in some capacity when making the college decisions—Harvard should ensure that this information is available and accurate.