So Northwestern moved up in the rankings again.

Big whoop.

In case you missed it, four of NU’s graduate schools improved their rankings in the “Best Graduate Schools 2004” guide released last week by U.S. News & World Report.

The truth is, the criteria used to determine all those rankings is about as arbitrary as the Associated Student Government’s election rules. I began to notice this last summer, when the Princeton Review rated NU No. 1 in the “Best Academic Experience For Undergraduates” category.

Now I love NU, but shooting to No. 1 after failing to make the list at all the year before — and then slipping to No. 10 this year — seemed odd. So I decided to check out some more of Princeton Review’s rankings.

After perusing categories like “Reefer Madness,” which rated schools’ pot habits, what most surprised me were two of the categories. There was one for the school with the most beer and a separate one for the most hard liquor. It is refreshing to know high school seniors will now be able to make an informed choice based on Budweiser or Smirnoff. I hear “Crazy About Crack” might be Princeton Review’s newest category addition next year.

But the most recognized rankings are those put out by U.S. News, which started rating colleges in 1983. Five years later, to develop a more scientific formula, the magazine brought in a new statistician, whose equation placed a small seminary at the top of the list. She was promptly fired.

I guess Jesus can’t be No. 1 all the time.

Since then, Harvard University, Yale University and Princeton University have consistently occupied the top spots each year because U.S. News adopted its own criteria to avoid any big surprises. The one exception to the Ivy League’s dominance was in 1999, when the California Institute of Technology ousted the Ivies from the top spot. This created such a stir that the magazine re-evaluated its criteria and the next year the Ivies were conveniently back on top.

The subjectivity of these rankings is difficult to ignore. The most heavily- weighted section of the the U.S. News rankings is the peer evaluation section, which accounts for 25 percent of a school’s overall rating. Another 20 percent is a school’s graduation rate. But does this say anything about the quality of those graduates? No. It shows they, um, graduated.

The random criteria used to determine these rankings should keep readers from putting too much stock in them.

Perhaps these college rankings are part of a larger trend. Maybe we’re becoming such a competitive society that we get a kick out of ranking everything. The Richmond Times reported last August that a Texaco station in Mechanicsville, Va., has the fifth finest restrooms in the country — I’m guessing their little condom vending machine actually worked.

Cosmopolitan magazine repeatedly ranks the top 10 ways to please your lover. People magazine simply rates the sexiest man alive, and Maxim magazine ranks, well, skanks. Maybe we’re just too lazy and would rather find out what others consider the best, rather than researching it ourselves.

Or maybe all this emphasis on ranking is merely meant to sell more magazines.

That last reason ranks pretty high on my list.