Washington University dropped to 14th place in this year’s U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of national universities, released online this Tuesday.

Last year the University tied with Johns Hopkins for 13th.

In an official statement, University officials said they are not worried about the drop.

“This minor change was likely due to several factors, including slight drops in the calculations used to determine each university’s ranking score. Past experience shows that these minor fluctuations in rankings have little impact on the university’s admissions efforts and the number of applications we receive, a number which has continued to rise significantly over the past decade,” the statement said.

Some students noted that while change in ranking may be unfortunate, it has little impact on them as current undergraduates.

“As an international student, US News’s college ranking significantly influenced my decision on college applications, since it was hard for me to travel abroad and visit colleges in person,” sophomore Lizzie Zhang, who came to the University from China, said. “In fact, part of the reason I chose Wash. U. is that it ranks the highest among all the schools that admitted me. However, since I am already in the school, the change in ranking doesn’t really matter to me.”

Senior Clare Schroder said that the University’s other attributes are more important than its ranking.

“I did not even look at the ranking when I applied. I chose Wash. U. because of the school, not because of the ranking,” she said.

In other college rankings, the University has not fared quite as well. The University was rated 31st in the 2011 Academic Rating of World Universities (ARWU), and 113th in Forbes’s annual ranking of the 650 best undergraduate institutions in the United States.

The discrepancy between the rankings is due to the differences in criteria used to compile them.

The ARWU compares schools based on research publications, alumni and faculty Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals and academic performance per student.

Forbes focuses on the affordability and productivity of the different institutions, which it judges by student evaluations, alumni self-reported salaries, four-year accumulated student debt, and the number of “nationally competitive awards” its students or faculty receive.

Rankings are primarily important for spurring alumni donations and garnering prospective student interest.

While some students worry that the school’s decreased ranking may affect their ability to get into graduate school, University officials have said this is not the case.

“When applying to Ph.D. programs, the undergraduate ranking of the institution you’re apply to matters little; rather, the strength of the department and the match between your research interests and those of the faculty are the most important factors to consider,” Amy Heath-Carpentier, pre-graduate school advisor and career development specialist at the Career Center said.

More important, she noted, is the ranking of the graduate institution.

“When applying to some masters programs, particularly MBAs and other business degrees, the ranking of the graduate program is often a consideration,” she said.

The University currently ranks between Johns Hopkins University (No. 13), Brown University and Cornell University (tied at No. 15).