In considering everything from sports to sports cars, Americans are fascinated with rankings.  Ratings, top-ten lists, and polls pervade our culture, and being at or near the top interests the public.  Of course, the world of higher education is no exception, with college-bound students and their parents (and the colleges themselves) turning the college-rating game into a successful industry.  Unfortunately, higher-ed institutions have no head-to-head competitions to provide direct comparison of their programs (other than "The College Bowl" game show, perhaps of limited help to us).  In fact, there are no universally accepted measures of colleges, despite the claims of those doing the rating.  The sheer variety of colleges in the United States makes the task of ranking them all the more difficult, and this variety is a major aspect of the richness of opportunity for college-bound students.
 
Students and parents often look to the well-publicized rankings to choose a college.  However, they would do well to examine the particular publication's methods and bias since those vary greatly, to the point that there are even rankings that seek to counter the rankings.  A sense of how rankings are determined can help in using them appropriately.  Are the methods inclined to perpetuate the success of traditionally successful institutions?  What are the polling practices?  (Princeton Review interviews current students, for example.)  What is the rating methodology?  (U.S. News has changed the weighting of different factors several times.)  Are there indications of outcomes for students with specific interests?  (It is possible to find information about postgraduate success in specific fields, for example, and one recent book examines postgraduate contribution to society.)
 
Two companies that don't rank schools, but rather give comparative information, also provide guidance in assessing the quality of schools and the ranking services.  The College Board offers numerous discussions of the rankings' impact, and Peterson's prints "Considering College Quality," a discussion of assessing institutional quality while also explaining why they don't believe in rankings.
 
College ratings have now been with us for more than two decades (actually much longer if you include specifically focused rankings in educational publications), and they play an interestingly paradoxical role in the world of college marketing.  Colleges generally disparage them, but they also publicize their high standing and display a "best college" graphic on their website.  They have also been known to tinker with admission policies and other ranking factors to maintain or improve their U.S. News standing -- there are opportunities for manipulation of the rankings.  And college rankings do change; according to Shirley Levin, an educational consultant in Rockville, Maryland, the rankings frequently change from year to year, with colleges even moving from one tier of a rating scheme to another.  "Some of these changes are directly related to the fact that the (ratings source) is constantly changing the formula and the type of information it uses to rank the schools - everything from subjective impressions of college presidents to the size of alumni donations as a measure of their satisfaction," Levin says.  "Also, the difference among scores among schools is so small that a slight change in a factor such as percentage of applicants accepted can make the difference."
 
Many colleges question both the data and the processes used by some of the ranking services.  Institutional reputation, for example, is a particularly thorny, difficult-to-measure aspect.
 
Whatever their perspective on the rankings, colleges will continue to devote attention to them.  And students will continue to consult the rankings in seeking the best school.  The important thing is to be aware of the controversial aspects, even game-playing, involved in college rankings.  No matter how great a school appears on paper or in the media, it may not prove to be a good fit for the individual student.  Learning about a college involves layering perspectives, including those of admission marketing, other publications, the college guidance counselor, and firsthand experience.  Understanding a college is more a process of discussion and reflection than one of picking a product from a list.
 
With credit to The College Board, Princeton Review and Peterson's.