Ivy Council blasts 'US News' rankings

The debate over the annual US News and World Report rankings of the nation's top colleges continued last week as the Ivy Council passed a resolution encouraging students to look beyond the survey as they decide which school to attend. After its March 9 meeting, the council -- which consists of delegates from the student governments of each of the eight Ivy League institutions -- released a statement describing the rankings as "inconsequential," adding that "simply because a school gets a top rating does not mean it is right for everyone." Brown sophomore Amy Joy Finkelstein explained that the delegates felt the rankings do not reflect the "unquantifiable" aspects of different colleges, and do not paint a fair picture of the each school. "No ranking system could ever describe the important differences between our universities," she said. "The only way prospective students can make informed decisions is to research the attributes of schools that are most important to them." Penn delegate and College sophomore Dave Futer noted that two schools are often only separated in the rankings by differences of a fraction of a point out of a scale of 100. "When students see the schools ranked in order, they interpret the difference to mean much more than it does," he said. "Once you consider the factors that make a specific school a good match for a specific student, the numerical differences between the top schools are essentially meaningless." Cornell sophomore Heather Mahar added that the rankings don't reflect her school's diversity. "Cornell has seven distinct undergraduate colleges. The US News rankings do not reflect the strengths of these diverse colleges, nor do they distinguish between the endowed and statutory colleges," she said. Mahar noted that Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations is widely considered to be the best in the world -- a fact which is not reelected in the university's overall ranking in the US News report.. "This exemplifies why students must take the time to research aspects of the colleges and universities they are considering and not place significant weight on the overall ranking," she said. And Columbia senior Catherine Song expressed concern that prospective students have been placing too much emphasis on the rankings. "A quantified comparison between institutions should not in any way be a significant factor in making a judgement about which particular school is the best match for a particular student," she noted. Princeton sophomore Brian Jo said it is important that the council's resolution is supported by students at the schools which traditionally benefit most from the rankings because of their ratings. "In the past, coalitions that have opposed the overall US News rankings have not necessarily had the support from several of the top-ranked schools that they needed to warrant sufficient attention," he explained. "I think ours is a powerful statement, especially with the majority support of the Ivy League, which contains many of the consistently top-ranked schools in US News." But Princeton freshman Spencer Merriweather said he disagreed with the resolution's stance against quantified rankings, adding that such rankings can occasionally be fairly representative of different schools. "Such criteria as student-teacher ratio and available student funding from yearly endowments are areas in which colleges across the nation may be justly compared," he explained.