Dartmouth held on to its seventh place rank for the third year in a row in U.S. News & World Report's annual survey of national universities and colleges. This year's rankings were published earlier this month in the magazine's "America's Best Colleges 1998 Annual Guide" issue.
U.S. News ranked both Harvard and Princeton as the best national universities followed by Duke and Yale in a tie for third place. Stanford University moved up one spot to fifth place and Massachusetts Institute of Technology move down to sixth place.
The University of Pennsylvania -- which has not been ranked in the top 10 in recent years -- tied with Dartmouth this year for the number seven ranking. Brown University, the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Emory University and Northwestern University were all tied at ninth place.
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg said although the College's ranking is high, he said he feels Dartmouth has a much better undergraduate education program than some of the other schools which were ranked higher than the College.
Two years ago, Dartmouth was ranked first by U.S. News in the category "Commitment to Undergraduate Education." The category did not appear in the magazine this year.
"Some of the other schools are much larger universities with larger resources," Furstenberg said. "They may be better in quantity but not necessarily quality."
Furstenberg said the ranking will probably not have a large impact on the number of applications as long as the College is ranked in the top 10.
"We've always been consistently ranked in the top 10," he said. "To most people, the difference between number six and number seven is very minuscule."
Factors such as selectivity, academic reputation, student to faculty ratio, class sizes, financial and faculty resources, alumni giving and graduation rate are taken into account in determining the rankings each year, according to the magazine.
In its rankings of national liberal arts colleges, Swarthmore College, Amherst College and Williams College all retained last year's ranks as the top three colleges respectively. Wellesley College pushed its way to number three to tie with Williams this year.
The magazine also offers a section -- "Best Values - Discount Price" -- which evaluates the cost of education. The magazine compares the quality of education to its cost while taking into consideration the amount of financial aid offered to its students.
In this category, the College ranked ninth -- above both Harvard and Yale.
Because "a very significant" number of high school students look at these rankings, Furstenberg said he is concerned about the amount of influence they may have on prospective applicants.
"High school guidance counselors can talk about them and might even pin them up on the bulletin boards," he said.
Freshman Ammar Khalid said the ranking played a large role in his college application decisions.
Khalid said "the rank itself was probably the first reason" but other factors played a role in his decision to apply to Dartmouth as well.
Furstenberg said he thinks the rankings are "not a particularly good way" of deciding which college to attend.
"It's so simplistic, I don't think anyone should decide where to attend based solely on the rankings," he said. "They may be helpful in helping students decide where they want to apply but beyond that I don't think they're of much value."
Some members of the Class of 2001, however, said the rankings did not influence their decision to attend Dartmouth.
"I didn't consider the rankings at all," Sarah Warlick '01 said.
"I don't think any ranking can take into consideration every aspect of a school."
The effects of the recent condemnations of U.S. News on the popularity of the magazine's "Best Colleges" issue is unclear.
Many colleges and universities have tried to discount the significance of the rankings over the past few years. In March, the Ivy Council, a group composed of representatives of the eight Ivy League schools, called the rankings "superficial" and urged high school students to use additional resources in deciding where to apply.
Also, a Stanford student almost a year ago founded the Forget U.S. News Coalition (FUNC), which has attempted to woo student governments to condemn the practice of ranking top schools.
