College rankings: the only way we have to quantify the unquantifiable. These are the lists that many of us use to understand how our education compares to those around us. From sites such as U.S. News & World Report and Princeton Review, to Niche.com and College Confidential, there is a wide range of sites devoted to understanding how schools compare to each other. And it’s not just potential and current students who cannot get enough, but these universities consistently use it as a marketing tool to encourage enrollment. College rankings have become a crucial part of the culture surrounding college admissions, using these lists to analyze the standard one needs to reach. Especially with the rise of social media and internet culture, many students are now obsessed with ranking, deriving their self-worth from whether or not they get into a T10 or T20 school.
But as I stated previously, college rankings by their very definition are unquantifiable. These websites don’t pick one factor to rank them with—that, at least, would make sense—but instead pick a variety of factors (almost with no rhyme or reason) and assign random values to them. College ranking sites use this criteria to determine how the experiences and opportunities at one school compare to another, but who determines what these important factors are? Or how much weight they hold? These lists cannot analyze everything, so the criteria and their individual weight varies from website to website. Which answers why college rankings are arbitrary, because what supposedly makes one top college rank higher than another? Some lists prioritize retention rate or graduation rate, while others focus on high school GPA or standardized test scores. Some lists focus on job placement rate and others focus on global and regional research reputation. The point being, an educational experience is not quantifiable in the way that college rankings portray them to be.
The reason college rankings are an issue is because it creates this toxic culture around higher education. People use these lists as fact, which in turn reinforces the classism and elitism so often associated with college. But just because a school has a “higher rank” doesn’t mean it’s the best school for the individual. Factors such as cost, location, and class size (just to name a few) are much more important than ranking alone. That’s why I believe that college rankings need to become obsolete. With a list that’s completely arbitrary, it causes much more harm than good.