Penn grabs No. 4 spot in 'U.S. News' rankings

The University of Pennsylvania stands alone as the fourth best school in the nation for the first time, according to the U.S. News and World Report rankings released last month.

The 2005 edition of America's Best Colleges ranks Penn fourth among national universities. Harvard and Princeton tied for first place, and Yale was ranked third.

Penn previously reached the No. 4 spot in 2003 but shared the rank with the California Institute of Technology, Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University. Penn dropped to No. 5 last year, tied with Cal Tech, Duke and Stanford.

Penn also ranked first for its faculty resources, including such factors as average faculty pay and student-to-faculty ratio. Faculty resources is one of the weighted indicators used to calculate a school's total score, which determines the rankings. Other measures of academic quality include peer assessment, financial resources and retention. Penn scored 95 points out of 100 to rank fourth.

"While we don't take the U.S. News and other rankings that seriously ... we are pleased with the current ranking," University Director of Communications Lori Doyle said, acknowledging that many parents and prospective students do follow the rankings with great interest.

"It's a reflection of hard work by many people," she added.

In terms of key criteria used to judge schools, Penn had one of the lowest acceptance rates among the colleges, with only 20 percent of applicants accepted last year. The University also earned points for having one of the highest proportions of small classes. Last year, 74 percent of Penn classes included fewer than 20 students.

While schools "shouldn't exaggerate the meaning of just one place," according to U.S. News Director of Data Research Robert Morse, the general position of a school is important.

Penn now appears to be holding its place in the top five, an accomplishment that some say affects the decisions that high school students make when applying to colleges. Choosing a school based entirely on its ranking is "way too simplistic," Morse said, but U.S. News believes the rankings "appear to be used responsibly" and with the right level of importance by parents and students, as just one of many factors in the decision-making process.

"We're not trying to take over the college choice decision," Morse said. He added that U.S. News does try to offer a large amount of information on a diverse group of colleges, allowing "parents and students to look at many factors in admission."

Morse cited the findings of a 2002 Art and Science Group, LLC poll that showed college rankings like those from U.S. News have "very little" influence on where students apply or matriculate. StudentPOLL found that only one-fifth of the 500 college-bound students reported reading articles that ranked schools.

Students who did use rankings said the numbers either created more interest in a college or made them more comfortable with the decisions they had already made, according to the Art and Science Group, LLC Web site.

"What we found stands in stark contrast to conventional assumptions about the rankings," said Richard Hesel, Art and Science Group, LLC co-founder, in a statement on the Web site.

He added, "In fact, for most prospective students, the rankings matter little: A campus tour ... or even the information available in college viewbooks or on college [Web sites] influence college choice far more than rankings."

U.S. News also evaluates the best undergraduate programs in individual fields. These rankings are based on the programs' peer assessment scores, according to deans and senior faculty.

Wharton retained its title as the best undergraduate business school in the nation for the fifth year in a row. The Sloan School of Management at MIT was ranked No. 2, and the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and the business program at the University of Michigan tied for No. 3.

Wharton is also No. 1 in the fields of finance, management, real estate, insurance and marketing.

Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science dropped three places from last year to rank No. 28, along with four other schools. U.S. News does not rank undergraduate nursing programs.

Penn's relatively new position as one of the top schools is seen by many as a reflection of former President Judith Rodin's work to boost the school's reputation through initiatives like community revitalization and campus renovations.

Rodin focused on building University resources throughout her 10-year term, during which time research funding doubled and Penn's endowment tripled.

Although Penn was ranked No. 16 in 1994 when Rodin became president, the University has remained among the top 10 national universities since 1997, according to U.S. News.

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