Northwestern is the 12th best national university in the country, according to the 2012 U.S. News & World Report’s university rankings. NU has occupied this spot for four consecutive years.
In the annual ranking system, U.S. News gives each university a final score based on multiple aspects such as average freshman retention rate, six-year graduation rate, student selectivity, undergraduate academic reputation index and high school counselor score. Besides offering school rankings, the report also offers data on each school’s academic life, financial aid, student life and application process.
According to University spokesman Al Cubbage, the administration does take the rankings into consideration.
“It’s always good to be ranked pretty high up on the list,” Cubbage said. “Northwestern has been, pretty consistently. What the University does is try to educate the students very well and do good research, and hopefully that will be recognized when it comes time to do the rankings.”
However, Cubbage hopes NU can improve its academic reputation by advertising its accomplishments more.
“We don’t toot our horn as much as we should,” he said. “We’re a better school than people give us credit for.”
Although many view the report as indicative of a university’s success, Professor Stephen C. Burnett said he thinks people should not put too much faith in these ratings.
“The first thing you have to understand about these rankings is that it may say nothing about Northwestern,” Burnett said.
When it comes to rankings, the strategy and management professor said, there are two concepts to keep in mind: the methodology of the rankings and the difference between ordinal and interval data. Because methodologies weigh certain qualities more than others, they can automatically benefit certain schools, he said.
Recognizing the difference between ordinal and interval data is important when evaluating college rankings, he said, because if surveys rank schools with ordinal data, readers cannot tell if there is any differences at all between the universities. In other words, schools ranked first and second could be very close in quality, while a third-ranked school could be more far off.
“What they’re doing is very misleading,” Burnett said. “What they do is take the interval data and downgrade it into rankings. Statistically speaking, there may be no difference.”
Burnett even cautions readers to not use the report to evaluate their own universities.
“What you don’t want to conclude is, ‘Oh my gracious, there must be something wrong with Northwestern,'” he said. “You have to understand that rankings are done in order to sell magazines and newspapers. They’re not done to find truth and enlightenment.”
Although some students use overall university rankings to choose schools during the college application process, some NU students do not heavily rely on them, such as Magdalena Olewinska.
The Weinberg freshman said rankings did not play a substantial role in her college choice except when they applied to her academic interests. She said it was more important for her college of choice to have a reputable business, finance and economics program rather than being named the overall best school in the country.
She said she also based her decision on schools’ locations, programs, real-world application and diversity.
Olewinska said the rankings are incapable of considering the needs of individual students.
“I feel like there’s too many variables to consider to make one ranking grade the overall truth,” she said.
