With another year’s release of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings, our Washington University finds itself ranked in a tie for 15th, one spot lower than its position on last year’s list.

After the list’s announcement, outcry filled the literal halls of Wash. U. as well as the more figurative halls of social media. Yik Yakkers did their best to make light of the situation—“#15 on the field, #1 in our hearts”—or lash out against the report itself. While both reactions were entertaining to read and listen to, I couldn’t help but think to myself, why do we care?

The U.S. News & World Report college ranking is a descriptive statistic, meaning it is an arbitrary summary of other statistics that someone deemed relevant. At face value, that sounds like a decent formula for finding the best college. But how do you weight each individual variable? Any slight variation in the weights of the variables or even the addition of another variable could change the ranking dramatically.

For example, in the U.S. News rankings, faculty pay comprises 7 percent of the entire school score and first-year retention rate is weighted at 4.5 percent. Logically, wouldn’t a student’s willingness to return to a school for a second year be more important than how much that school’s faculty are paid? With the retention rate, to increase its score, a school would presumably try to make the experience better for students. With faculty pay, the school could just pay their professors more and thus become “better” in the eyes of college rankings.

Not to mention that both of those statistics are purely quantitative and thus objective variables. According to the publication itself, such “outcome-related measures” only “account for 30 percent of the rankings and are the most heavily weighted factors in the methodology.” That means that the majority of the rankings, already skewed objectively, are compromised of completely subjective values.

One such value is the “undergraduate academic reputation,” weighted at 22.5 percent of a school’s total score. This score consists of subjective opinions solicited from “top academics” at peer institutions. These academics may or may not have visited the school they are ranking. They certainly have not lived there (unless they previously worked there). And they have an obvious conflict of interest in assessing a competitive institution. If you wanted an honest opinion of someone, would you ask their closest rivals how they felt?

We as Americans are obsessed with rankings; that’s not revolutionary. Turn on your TV and you will see almost every commercial espousing that their product is number-one in this facet or that. Wanting to apply that same mentality to our college education is not surprising, but is largely problematic.

The college experience cannot be boiled down into just one descriptive statistic. For students to base their choice of higher education on a number that has been arbitrarily created is sadly misguided. For parents and the greater social culture to depend on these rankings as well is just disappointing.

Intangibles comprise the college experience. A student who would love the North Carolina hills where No. 8 Duke University resides is not the same student who would work well in the Northeastern environment that No. 1 Princeton University provides. For one, the weather in the South is usually far more temperate than that of the Northeast, drastically affecting the choices of some students who are more conscious of their environment. To shame students and say they are inferior to their peers because they chose to attend a lower-ranked school perpetuates the terrible ranking-based mindset that plagues our society.

So yes, Wash. U. is ranked No. 15—tied with Vanderbilt University and Cornell University, one spot lower than Brown University. Yes, we were ranked higher than Brown last year. But maybe Brown had a pay increase this fall. Who knows, and who cares? In the end, the U.S. News & World Report college rankings are no better than “Whose Line is it Anyway?”—“the show where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.”