Media Outlets Compete in College Ranking Arena 'Best Colleges' Lists Proliferate as Mags Try to Snag Newsstand Sales

Author: Claire M. L. Bourne

America loves lists. Parcel almost any series of related information into an easily digestible top-10 format, announce its existence in a prominent position on the cover of any magazine and you've got yourself a publication that will fly off newsstands. Entertainment Weekly produces an "It List" of who's hot in pop culture, People rates the most beautiful people in the world and Fortune ranks the movers and shakers in the business world.

Twenty years ago, U.S. News & World Report virtually rode the college rankings bandwagon alone. Since 1983, when the magazine first published its now famous list of "America's Best Colleges," a handful of other publications have entered the fray. Today more than ever, prospective students find themselves in the midst of a media war zone as magazines, newspapers and Web sites vie for a slice of the increasingly lucrative college prep pie.

Since the beginning of the 2003-04 academic year, at least five national publications have compiled some sort of college rankings, and Middlebury College has been featured in all of them.

But Middlebury's Admissions Office refuses mention of the College's rankings in its literature. "Prospective students should give the school the hardest look possible. They shouldn't trust the rankings," said Director of Admissions John Hanson. In fact, Middlebury Magazine, in its fall 2003 edition, is the only college publication to reference them.

Why the sudden surge? Public interest, for one, said Director of Public Affairs Phil Benoit. "The financial success of the U.S. News rankings over the years has no doubt been a factor in inspiring others to follow in that path," Benoit said.

And what better way to make a profit than to sell the public what it wants. "This is a society that loves lists. It is recent that this has been applied to college rankings," explained Hanson.



U.S. News: The Rankings

"Bastion"?



This year, U.S. News placed Middlebury seventh - tied with Davidson College - on its list of "Best Liberal Arts Colleges." Middlebury has bounced all over the top 10 in recent years, ranking as high as fifth. The U.S. News ranking is still thought by many to be the most comprehensive and reliable list, but some, like Hanson and Middlebury President John McCardell, are not so sure.

"Any method that gives 20 percent weight to 'peer reputation' is apt to be skewed," said McCardell, in reference to U.S. News' attempt to qualify a school by asking administrators and admissions deans from peer institutions to rate it on a scale of one to five. "Peer reputation" is, of course, one of many criteria used to generate a college's final standing, but McCardell maintains that polling college counselors would yield more accurate results. "That, according to U.S. News, would be 'too difficult,'" he maintained. "The motive thus becomes ease rather than reliability."

Over the years, the weekly newsmagazine has taken constructive criticism to heart and refined its methodology. But categories like "peer reputation" prove it has not completely eliminated subjective data from its formula. "Can you really judge the level of a college's academic reputation by asking administrators from the group of colleges you are evaluating to rank the institutions in the list, or should you be surveying the marketplace?" asked Benoit.

To its credit, the annual U.S. News rankings issue ties together a wealth of data in a series of articles and charts. The average reader might not consider the methodology used to generate the final rankings, a reality Hanson, McCardell and Benoit consider troubling. "Once you get into opinion, there are too many confusing variables," said Hanson.



Branching Out



While the U.S. News college rankings issue caters to a broad base of prospective students and parents, a number of more specialized publications are now serving up their own top-schools lists.

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE) boarded the college ranking train last year when it issued its own top-24 list of liberal arts colleges. The purpose of the ranking was to compare the institutions' "relative success in attracting, enrolling and graduating African-American students as well as their progress in bringing black professors to their campuses."

Middlebury has ranked 20th on JBHE's list for two years running. This year, however, the publication praises the College for upping the allocation of funds to finance interested black students' visits to campus. JBHE credits this initiative with the notable rise in black first-year students this year - five percent of the Class of 2007, up from 2.5 percent of last year's first-year class. Hanson linked JBHE's foray into the rankings fold to a growth in social awareness.

For those high school seniors already thinking about business or law school, The Wall Street Journal ran a story on Sept. 26 about America's most successful "feeder" colleges - institutions that send the most graduates to the nation's top graduate schools. Middlebury ranked 23rd out of 50 on a list that included research universities and liberal arts schools alike.

The most recent addition to college rankings landscape is The Atlantic Monthly's exhaustive 25-page "exploration of the American college-admissions system." The compendium includes a list of the nation's most highly selective doctoral universities, liberal arts colleges and service academies. Middlebury stands at number 25. "There is something inherently attractive about trying to rate schools based on their selectivity," writes Don Peck, director of The Atlantic's editorial-research staff, conceding, however, that a student should not pick Harvard (fifth on the list) over a less selective college just because it is harder to get into.

Even comparing schools based on their "selectivity" is not a foolproof method, according to Hanson. "Selectivity can be measured in different ways," he said. "The numbers can be played with." The Atlantic based its findings on admission rates, SAT percentiles and high school class standings for the Class of 2006. Since Middlebury does not require applicants to submit SAT scores, the statistics are automatically distorted. This is also a perennial complaint about U.S. News' methodology.

Perhaps the most innovative rankings to be published in recent months is Outside magazine's feature on colleges "with top-notch academic credentials, a healthy environmental ethos and an A+ sense of adventure." The College on the Hill and the adjacent town of Middlebury clinched third place, beating out Dartmouth and the University of Vermont. The College garnered "extra credit" points for the annual Feb "ski down" graduation ceremony at the Snow Bowl.



Useful to whom?



"Admissions notices the fact that people arrive on campus with copies of U.S. News clutched in their hands," said Benoit, "so it's important we show up well."

It has always been McCardell's philosophy that if the rankings exist, it is better that Middlebury appear on the lists than not. "I know the public pays attention to these rankings, and so we must also," he said. "But in fact, what is the real difference between fifth and sixth place?"

Hanson said the admissions office "doesn't pay much attention" to the rankings. "If Middlebury is in the top 10, that's meaningful," he commented. He confirmed his skepticism of the tight rankings - schools jockeying to climb one or two spots in the rankings. "They're all the same schools as they were the year before."

Regardless of perceived methodological weaknesses and recent market saturation, these magazines sell. But who is buying them?

Prospective students' parents "tend to put more value in where an institution that their child is considering falls in the rankings," Benoit maintained.

Curren
t Middlebury students concur. Trista McGetrick '06 said her mother had "all the magazines." While she conceded that the rankings influenced which colleges she "looked into," she said they did not ultimately affect her decision to come to Middlebury.

Duncan Cooper '06 said magazine rankings played a smaller role in his college search than in his parents' effort to find the perfect college for him. "They were interested in me going to one of the top ranked schools," he explained. "For me, it was about the feel of the school."

Regardless of who ends up using the information contained within special college ranking magazine issues, one thing is clear. They generate revenue - maybe as much as, if not more than, publications that label Ashton Kutcher the year's sexiest bachelor and slap his face on the cover.