Rankings fever

At the end of every summer, dozens of magazines and Web sites launch their "authoritative" rankings of America's best colleges and universities. There are literally thousands of colleges in the United States, and ranking them consistently is no simple task. Fortunately, no matter where you look, Vassar appears towards the top of the list.

Here are some of the highlights:

U.S. News & World Report: 12th

U.S. News & World Report (High School Counselors Ranking): 6th

Forbes Magazine: 23rd (including both colleges & research universities)

Princeton Review: 10th Most Beautiful Campus

Princeton Review: 9th Best College Theater Program

How precise, reliable, and trustworthy are all these various rankings? Well, many critics point out that ranking colleges is sort of like ranking music -- one's experience is so subjective that 'ranking' them seems irrelevant. I know plenty of miserable, slow-witted people who attend the top 20 national universities on U.S. News, and I know many really brilliant, happy and driven people who attend schools with lower rankings. College rankings are not determinative of your experience. Any school will be entirely what you make of it.

That said, many of these rankings are based on important, objective data -- for example, graduation rates, student/faculty ratios, and endowment size. (For the record, Vassar has a very high graduation rate, nearly 300 faculty, and a very large endowment). To look at one number in depth, consider the freshmen retention rate. This number is the percentage of freshmen who return the following year -- it's a pretty good indicator of student satisfaction. Here, Vassar ranks 10th in the nation with 95.8% of our freshmen returning as sophomores. In this category, we crushed schools like Wesleyan, Haverford, Middlebury and Wellesley. Now consider what U.S. News calls the "Best Value" schools -- the colleges with the greatest percentage of discounted tuition through generous financial aid packages. Here, Vassar also ranks toward the top, again beating out Wesleyan, Haverford, Middlebury, Wellesley and Carleton, to name a few. Surely, these data are important facts to consider when selecting a college.

In short, rankings have many pros and cons. You should always take them with a grain of salt and look carefully at their methodology. But it's reassuring to know that -- across many years and across many methodologies -- Vassar is consistently leading the pack.

Incidentally, my friends and I are crossing our fingers that Vassar will break into the Top Ten on U.S. News next year for the College's 150th anniversary. We're so close. We know Vassar should be there. Next year, it will be.