“Come on, Finding Nemo is definitely better than Toy Story!” you exclaim while browsing IMBD‘s Top 250 list of films. You might have similar objections while browsing rankings of music, sports players, TV shows, or anything of that sort: the writers of those lists obviously didn’t see things the way you saw them.

And yet, when it comes to comparing colleges, many students will immediately look up a list of rankings and think, “Yup, those HYP [Harvard, Yale, Princeton] Ivies are still on top.” They might be tempted to pick their college list just from the top 20 or apply to every Ivy League school, thinking that they would be happy at any of them without doing more research. This isn’t just about a song playing on the radio, though; this is about the institutions that can determine your friends and career for the rest of your life. And we rely on some list on the internet to see which one is the best?

It is for the same reasons that people use any rankings list: college rankings are quick and easy to read, compile a lot of information in one place, and often can be good guides, depending on what one is looking up. As Rajan Gupta ‘17 puts it, “Kids want to see what colleges are worth applying to or set standards for themselves. They use college rankings as a way to find schools and set goals for themselves.” Furthermore, it is a lot harder for average people to judge the quality of a university themselves, especially compared to listening to a song and thinking, “Eh, I don’t like it.”

How are these lists created, anyway? Take US News‘s “Best Colleges” list for example, probably the first link that comes up on Google when one searches for college rankings. US News states that, in formulating their list, two of the biggest factors are reviews from academics and counselors and retention (i.e. the proportion of returning students and graduation rate). Other factors include faculty salary and quality, the school’s selectivity,

and financial resources. Some of these variables are pretty telling of a college’s quality, but others are more arbitrary. For example, schools can drive their admissions rate down and appear more selective if they simply get more students to apply, without necessarily changing the quality of their education. In addition, one of the most heavily-weighted variables – the reviews – are really just opinions. You might not agree with an experienced film critic, and you might not agree with the college experts either.

Thus, even US News admits that “The host of intangibles that makes up the college experience can’t be measured by a series of data points.” And these “intangibles” can make a pretty big difference in how you spend your four years of college.

Let’s just look at a few schools in US News‘s top 10. Columbia is known for its urban campus in bustling Manhattan and for its “Core Curriculum” that promotes discussion between all students. The University of Pennsylvania is also in an urban environment, but one of its selling points is an interdisciplinary curriculum that combines the classroom with service and projects in Philadelphia. Duke University has a more open (some even say isolated) suburban campus in North Carolina, but students are attracted both by nearby startups and companies in the “Research Triangle” and by Duke’s passionate school spirit. Even these are generalizations, but they display just how different college experiences can be between closely-ranked schools.

Thus, Angela Cheung ’16 warns, “[College rankings] should be used to help aid your decision… but you should not make your decisions based on the rankings.”

Students who reference college rankings might be looking further ahead than just the four years in college. There is a common belief that attending an elite university can get you a better job and higher earnings in adulthood, but it’s not as simple as that. Some schools do have higher student success rates than other schools, and having a degree from a prestigious university can help a student’s resume stand out in certain job fields. However, a 2002 study published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics found that when controls were included in research regarding students’ abilities, graduates made similar wages regardless of the school they went to. Going to a certain school does not give anyone a shortcut; rather, success really does depend on a person’s own work and merit.

While college rankings are not completely useless, they should never be seen as the absolute authority on which college is best for you. The lists are just resources that should be used alongside other sources of information like college websites, visits, and conversations with students or graduates. Ultimately, you decide which college is best for you.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings\

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/dalekrueger_More_Selective_College.pdf