The editors at U.S. News & World Report have developed a system that they believe accurately identifies the best colleges and universities in the nation.
And they're certainly not alone.
Countless other lists of the "best colleges" in America are published in guide books and magazines every year, with each organization promoting its own compilation as the best source for evaluating schools.
But the more popular these rankings become, the more some members of the higher education field are asking the same question: So what?
"There are probably a dozen outstanding universities in the country that stand by themselves," Provost Robert Barchi said. "It doesn't make a lot of sense to say that one university is the best university out there."
Despite Penn's recent success in the U.S. News rankings -- the University jumped to fifth place on the latest list, released last night -- Barchi is one of many administrators across the nation who have criticized the process of assigning rankings to schools. Like others, he claims the criteria don't necessarily reflect the educational opportunities a particular university offers.
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But Erik Olson, editor of The Princeton Review's Best 331 Colleges guide book, said he believes that the rankings play a much more important role than administrators are willing to admit.
"Schools are obsessed with rankings," Olson said. "When schools end up on a less coveted list, they try to poke holes in our methodology. But when they're on the other side, they include it in their marketing package."
Nicholas Thompson, an editor for Washington Monthly magazine, has written numerous articles criticizing the criteria that organizations like U.S. News use to evaluate colleges. He believes that some major universities attempt to exploit the natural flaws in the system.
"University administrators will come in and they'll say, `You should change your rankings to account for more of this,'" Thompson said. "Some universities have hired consultants to look at where they can improve in their rankings."
Although Thompson said he believes such lobbying has very little effect on the final product, others say that schools have a great deal of power over where they land in the rankings.
"A lot of that data isn't necessarily that reliable because you can tweak it really easily," said Diane Craig, co-author and research analyst for The Top American Research Universities, a report geared more toward faculty and administrators than students.
"You can change your policies to make yourself look better," she added.
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Craig, for one, feels that there is little or nothing separating the top 10 schools on any of the lists.
The U.S. News list "lends itself to believe that there is a big difference between number one and number 10," Craig said. "It give the impression that they are much more different than they actually are."
But Robert Morse, director of research for the U.S. News college issue, said he believes the rankings have created a strong basis for comparison.
"We're using indicators that measure academic quality," Morse said. "To say that using those indicators isn't producing some measure of academic quality is something we don't agree with."
Morse said that the U.S. News list is not meant to take the place of college visits or alumni interviews.
"We're not saying that they're supposed to be the sole factor that students should use," Morse said. "We're not trying to accomplish a fool-proof way."
Olson agrees, adding that he believes students have to start the college process somewhere.
"When you're first starting out your college search, there has to be some sort of standard for comparison," Olson said.
Unlike many other rankings, including those at U.S. News, The Princeton Review uses student surveys to rate all 331 schools. In addition, the book presents lists in individual categories, such as the best party school or most beautiful campus rather than giving each school a comprehensive rank.
"We don't say that this is the best college because we don't believe that one college is the best college for every student," Olson said. "Our goal is to help each one of our readers to find the right school for him or her."
But many believe that no matter what the list says, it can't assure a student that one particular school is right for him or her.
Stuart Rojstaczer, a professor of earth and ocean sciences at Duke University, is an outspoken critic of rankings, claiming that the current role of rankings is to reassure insecure students about their college choice.
"You're paying a lot of money for a product, and you want some assurance that the product you're buying is worth it," Rojstaczer said.
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Regardless of the flaws with college rankings, lists like the one published by U.S. News have never been more popular.
And the popularity of college rankings has led many to create alternative ways to evaluate the nation's top schools.
Craig's empirical study groups universities based on whether they are in the top 25 or the top 50 schools in categories such as total research, private support and faculty awards.
Rojstaczer created rankyourcollege.com, a tongue-in-cheek online site that pokes fun at rankings by creating a new list of schools each time the Web page is loaded.
Thompson suggests a system in which grades and student surveys are taken into account.
"You could try to measure actual learning on campus," he said. "Instead of just using arbitrary numbers, they should actually go out and try to measure actual learning."
Despite all the controversy over college rankings, most believe that it is not likely that one standardized system will be created to evaluate schools anytime soon.
"You're trying to put all universities into one mold, and in fact, they're not created that way," Barchi said.
