US News & World Report College Rankings 2008: Why You Shouldn't Pay Attention to Them

US News claims that it ranks colleges in order to provide students and their families with an easier way to compare colleges before sending in applications. However, my problem with the rankings is the negative image of public schools that they promote.

In the US News rankings, the top 20 schools are all private. The first public school on the list is #21, UC Berkeley. If you are familiar with California's public universities (UCLA, Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, etc) you know that the UC system is comprised of arguably the best schools in the country. Students in California, to all appearances, consider their public universities to be on the same level as Stanford & Caltech. However, according to US News, UC Berkeley warrants 21^st place in the rankings while Stanford is 4^th, and Caltech is 5^th.

The reason why public schools fare so badly in the rankings is quite simple. The criteria with which US News ranks colleges is not at all designed to give public schools a chance in the rankings. US News uses criteria such as: Retention Rate, Graduation Rate, Class Size, Selectivity, and Peer Assessments to rank colleges.

Perhaps you can now see why public schools do not fare as well in the rankings. US News does not use measures which would mean more to prospective students. As a college student, I don't really care how many of my classmates decide to donate money after graduation, or how selective my school was during my application year. I would rather know: job placement statistics for alumni, graduate school placements, graduate exam test scores, etc. US News does not measure actual academic factors when ranking schools. Rather, it focuses on criteria which are designed to "fail" public colleges from the get go.