U.S. News & World Report and Forbes recently released their annual college rankings. The University came in at 25th, down from 24 in 2009, in U.S. News and World Report's list and 44th according to Forbes, up from 64 in 2009.
Although Dean of Admissions Greg Roberts said it is complicated to judge a school's quality based on any formulated ranking, he did recognize the positive publicity a school could obtain from a high ranking.
"It's very difficult to accurately convey a school's strength and programs through a formulaic ranking," Roberts said. "At the same time, they have been around for many years, and if there is a ranking, it's nice to be recognized."
Roberts added that the University certainly paid attention to the rankings because they might affect the decisions of high school students.
The University may not have broken the top 20 among all schools nationally, but it was tied for second among public schools, said Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News & World Report.
"When you look at the overall ranking of 25 and the faculty resource ranking, there's a large discrepancy. It's very hard for a public university to be ranked very high because so much of it is based on money," Roberts said.
U.S. News & World Report and Forbes differ in the methods the publications use for formulating their annual rankings.
Morse said the biggest factor in the publication's ranking is academic reputation, which is based on surveys of both high-ranking University officials and high school counselors. Freshmen retention and graduation rates also play a big role in the formula, together making up one-fifth of the ranking. Faculty resources - deriving from a combination of class size and faculty salary - also comprise 20 percent of the rankings. Student selectivity, per-student spending, alumni-giving rate and any improvement in actual graduation rate over what the publication predicts makes up the rest of their formula.
Forbes takes a quite different approach to its rankings system. The biggest chunk, 30 percent, is the average salary of graduates. Next in importance is what students think of classes, as measured by RateMyProfessor.com and MyPlan.com. Four-year debt load is a significant factor, making up one-eighth of the ranking according to Forbes' website. Ten percent of the ranking is based on how many alumni are in Who's Who in America, adjusted for enrollment.
Forbes did not respond to requests for comment, but a statement published in an article along with the publications read, "While other college rankings are based in large part on school reputation as evaluated by college administrators, we focus on factors that directly concern incoming students: Will my courses be interesting? Is it likely I will graduate in four years? Will I incur a ton of debt getting my degree? And once I get out of school, will I get a good job?"
Just like U.S. News & World Report, Forbes takes retention rate, graduation rate and the difference between predicted and actual graduation rate into consideration.\nDespite all the factors that U.S. News & World Report takes into account, Morse said the publication's annual rankings still do not necessarily account for all the "uniqueness and complexities" a university has to offer.
"We're only measuring what can be measured. The atmosphere of the school, what students learn - we're not really measuring that, and we don't think anyone is measuring that," Morse said.
Morse also added that students should not use college rankings as the sole criterion by which they choose schools to which they apply. Nevertheless, the rankings can be indicative of one school in relation to another, he said.
"There are significant differences in things like the resources of schools," he said. "People also want to know the relative standings of institutions."
Harvard, Princeton and Yale Universities are the three highest ranked schools by U.S. News & World Report, while Williams, Princeton and Amherst are Forbes' top three.
One of the big differences between the rankings is that U.S. News divides schools into categories while Forbes groups them together, Morse said. Williams and Amherst led the liberal arts rankings published by U.S. News & World Report.
"U.S. News is comparing schools that are like each other to each other versus comparing all schools. People have to decide whether you can compare the military academies to Harvard to Washington and Lee," Morse said.
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