Illustration by Dion Hines

Sidechat was spiteful. Full of a bear’s venom. The students of the college knew it, and so did the faculty. Throughout the day, I overheard bits of conversations that echoed the words “24” and “rank.” I saw multiple groups of students huddled around individual phones like campers around a campfire, but — in the age of TikToks and Instagram Reels — I had no reason to question their behavior. Later, in one of my studio classes, I found myself in their position when my friend showed me memes and rants regarding WashU’s descent from the Top 20. The screen reflected my furrowed brow. I didn’t know that U.S. News had published their 2024 college rankings. Nor was I aware that I should give a damn.

Back home, the only people that ever kept up with college rankings, who were nearly nonexistent in my low-income, predominately Black district, were the students that had faith that they could get into highly ranked institutions. So, the transition to WashU — where many students prioritized colleges’ rankings during their application process — came with a culture shock. 

The next day brought miscellaneous conversation about our school’s new rank. In one conversation, two of my peers were appalled by the fact that the University of Michigan ranked above us. In another conversation between one of my suitemates and another student on our floor, both of them agreed that, despite WashU no longer repping a Top 20 status, WashU students are still getting a “Top 20 education.” To me, these conversations were coated in a pretentiousness that only swelled within this university’s privileged echochamber. 

Recognizing students’ high regard for college rankings, I started to ask questions: what is the validity of these rankings, and do they uphold privilege within academia?

In the beginning, there was U.S. News

The U.S. News & World Report has not always been the definitive college bible it is today. The publication started out as two separate magazines — United States News and World Report — both founded by journalist and publisher David Lawrence in 1933 and 1946. The two functioned as respective outlets for national and international news until Lawrence merged them into the U.S. News & World Report in 1948. Unlike its primary competitors Time and Newsweek, the new and upcoming magazine was notably more conservative and focused more on educational and political matters rather than sports and pop culture.

Over the span of its publishing, U.S. News & World Report has become known for its numerous rankings: Best States, Best Cars, Best Hospitals, Best Global Universities, and — most renowned — Best Colleges. U.S. News’ Best Colleges list was first published in 1983 and only considered school reputation as a criteria for its ranking. Though the formula for the publication’s college rankings has become much more meticulous over the years — a new formula was introduced within the past year — U.S. News and universities around the country have found themselves in scandals regarding the publication’s rankings.

Cheater, cheater, pumpkin-eater

While high-school students around the country flock to the yearly college rankings as gospel, there are guidance counselors and universities that criticize the lists. In 1995, Reed College pulled out of the U.S. News rankings because of the college’s belief that U.S. News’ methodology was flawed, and it has proven to be so with universities themselves at fault. In 2022, Michael Thaddeas, a mathematics professor at Columbia University, released an analysis exposing Columbia for falsifying data regarding the institution’s finances. Within the next year, Columbia dropped out of the U.S. News’ undergraduate rankings. In the years before Columbia was put on blast, Temple University and the University of Oklahoma were exposed for falsifying data submitted to U.S. News. In 2016, the University of South Florida and Sam Houston State University over-reported their expenditures to U.S. News by millions (14.4 million in the case of USF and roughly 5.3 million in the case of SHSU).

Along with lying about numbers, universities have also used persuasion tactics to boost their rankings. In an interview with Olivia B. Waxman of Time Magazine, Adam Nguyen — who formerly reviewed student applications for Columbia — revealed that “because part of the U.S. News methodology includes a survey of how colleges are viewed by officials at other schools, colleges would wine-and-dine the survey voters.” Furthermore, in order to take advantage of the metric that values small class size, universities would schedule their small lecture classes to be in the fall semester “in time for rankings that come out in the beginning of the academic year.”

Considering the lengths that institutions go to in order to maintain or bolster their rankings, these rankings have to mean something, right?

Siri, play “Nothing Really Matters” by Lauryn Hill

When engaging in conversation about college rankings, the central phrase that members of that conversation throw around is prestige, but what we come to know as “prestige” is, in reality, quite arbitrary. First, focusing on semantics, Oxford Dictionary defines prestige as “widespread respect and admiration felt for someone or something on the basis of a perception of their achievements or quality.” The inclusion of “perception” in this definition is appropriate since “prestige” derives from the Latin term “praestigiae” which translates to “conjuring tricks.” A later Latin term of the same derivative — “praestigium” — translates to “illusion.” So, in the context of definition, prestige isn’t really winning. Our current understanding of prestige is also undermined by the history of the Ivy League itself.

The Ivy League was born from an article by Stanley Woodward published by the New York Herald Tribune in 1933. In this article, Woodward coined the phrase “ivy colleges” to describe the common sports programs of the modern-day Ivy League institutions: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth University, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. Students from these schools published an editorial in student newspapers pushing for the establishment of a league of these ivy colleges. In 1954, a formal league — now known as the Ivy League — was founded as a division for athletic competition, and this league has developed beyond the context of athletics, bleeding into philosophy regarding education. But the prestige of the Ivy League does not necessarily come from a long history of academic rigor. Rather, it stems from privilege. 

Along with being historically prestigious, schools within the Ivy League are historically expensive, so the only people that could attend the universities were wealthy. These wealthy students usually went to highly competitive private schools with close ties to the League. Furthermore, women were not admitted into the Ivy League until 1968, with Columbia being the last Ivy League to admit women in 1983. The Ivy League also did not fully integrate until the 1950s and 1960s. With the Ivies having such a small applicant pool of the most historically cherished group — rich, white men — it becomes obvious that the prestige of the Ivy League has been fostered from intricate systems of oppression. U.S. News’ college rankings do nothing but accentuate this arbitrary prestige by circulating Ivy League universities throughout the Top 10 rankings. 

Shoutout to my HBCUs

On the topic of privilege and oppression, U.S. News does not pay proper homage to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). In U.S. News’ most recent rankings of national universities, no HBCU broke the Top 100, with Howard University and Florida A&M University being the only HBCUs to break the Top 200. In the case of Spelman University, it ranked #1 on the rankings of HBCUs and #39 on the rankings of national liberal arts colleges, but other HBCUs have not been given that same grace. Xavier University in Louisiana, Tuskegee University, Claflin University, Fisk University, Dillard University, and several other HBCUs are not listed in any rankings besides that for historically Black universities. The exclusion of these institutions allows predominately white institutions to overshadow fully worthy HBCUs.

According to UNCF, a nonprofit that funds scholarships for black students and general scholarships for 37 private HBCUs, “25% of African American graduates with STEM degrees come from HBCUs. Eight HBCUs were among the Top 20 institutions to award the most science and engineering bachelor’s degrees to Black graduates from 2008-2012.” Furthermore, Black students report feeling more financially stable at historically Black institutions — a fact that should help their rankings since borrower debt and financial resources per student weigh 5% and 8%, respectively, in U.S. News’ new formula. 

College rankings do nothing for students. Though U.S. News’ lists have been utilized by many students and high-school faculty alike over the past few decades, college rankings are mostly an ego boost for universities. High school students should not look towards these rankings as a beacon of light to make their direction more clear. They should, rather, look at specific programs that specific colleges offer in their desired field or major; look for student reviews of the school to get a feel of campus life; and take in-person or virtual tours of the campus. No school should be ruled out solely for its ranking. Sure, employers and graduate schools will look at the school you went to, but there is no point in marketing yourself as a Washington University in St. Louis graduate and a recipient of a “Top 20 education” if your work is crap. Also, it makes very little sense for students that already attend a college to keep up with college rankings since the rankings are utilized as a shortcut during the college application process. With that being said, it makes even less sense to be angry over those rankings. We already go here, y’all. Be so for real.