After two consecutive years of falling in the annual U.S. News & World Report's college rankings, Dartmouth has leapt two spaces to ninth place on the hotly-debated list that will be released tomorrow morning on the magazine's website.
Among Ivy League institutions, Dartmouth placed fifth behind Princeton, which holds the first position, Harvard and Yale, which are tied for second and the University of Pennsylvania, which is tied with Stanford in sixth place.
Director of Admissions Karl Furstenberg told The Dartmouth today that "When you're in the top ten, it just confirms what people already know ... It may not make a big difference, but it doesn't make our job harder."
"I think that when you're in the top tier of institutions nationally, you're really talking about angels dancing on the head of a pin," Director of Public Affairs Laurel Stavis said, noting that the differences between the most highly ranked schools are "incredibly small."
She explained that it is tough to apply a quantitative ranking system to the Dartmouth experience, which she classified as "an experience that is essentially qualitative."
College Provost Susan Prager said applicants and their parents do look at the rankings, but she added, "When you're dealing with as accomplished an applicant pool as we have, most of the applicants are looking well beyond rankings."
She said more important factors that perspective students consider and the breadth and quantity the College has as well as atmosphere.
The rankings were leaked to the media before the scheduled Sept. 1 release date as a result of a distribution mix-up in Middlebury, VT. Jim Denko, a grocery manager at the Grand Union in Middlebury, said deliverymen accidentally filled racks with the new magazines earlier this week, probably not knowing the official release date.
Richard Folkers, director of media relations for U.S. News & World Report told The Dartmouth that he had no idea how the magazines got out early, but said he had heard many stories third hand.
"They're printed in July," he said. "And we don't put armed guards on them."
He compared the leak to copies of Harry Potter getting out before schedule earlier this summer. "The most closely guarded book of this year got out to the news stands early," he explained.
Despite the fact that The Boston Globe and The Associated Press, among others, have copies of the report and have published the key results, Folkers refused to divulge the criteria used for this year's report or whether the ranking system had changed since last year. He insisted that the full report would be made public tomorrow at 7 a.m. on the magazine's website.
He pointed out that the actual U.S. News Report has not been scooped by various news organizations because there are thousands of schools involved in the study and only a few of the rankings have been made public.
The Boston Globe reported this morning that Cal Tech and Johns Hopkins University fell from their 2000 rankings because U.S. News changed how it accounted for per-student spending. This year, the magazine placed more emphasis on undergraduate education -- a move that most likely benefited Dartmouth but hurt schools with major research and graduate programs.
Furstenberg said the only time when rankings could affect applications is if there was a large jump from one year to the next. Johns Hopkins University was ranked in the top ten last year, but this year was number 16. He said he would be "a little bit concerned" by such a change in rank.
Charlene Liebau Director of Admissions at Cal Tech, which was ranked first last year, told The Dartmouth that the high score did not change admissions.
"Our applications increased, but they had been the past five years," she said, explaining that although rankings may increase awareness, they do not affect the quantity or quality of students who apply.
"We continue to be the very same institution we were three years ago -- all of this is beyond what Cal Tech is all about," she said.
She added, "Students are well aware that these rankings change every year -- they're not going to make a decision that will be a four year and lifetime investment based on one year's rankings."
Furstenberg echoed Liebau's opinion of the report last year, when Dartmouth was ranked 11, saying that Dartmouth cannot be judged by its position on a list.
Prager said, "The year to year fluctuations are just a part of the picture." She called the difference between number one and number 10 and the difference between 10 and 25 "fine gradations."
The release problems are not the first challenge to that U.S. News rankings have been faced recently. This mistake follows harsh criticisms of the magazine's primarily opinion-based methodology earlier this summer by The National Opinion Research Center.
John Lombardi, former president of the University of Florida, recently published a new sorting system that he argues is more reliable than the U.S. news method.
Released in July, this new ranking system uses nine measures, and places schools in ranges, such as the top 25, rather than in number slots, based on point scores.
"We think those micro-distinctions are unimportant," said Diane Craig, a research analyst at The Center for Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, which released the new method. "We're trying to get away from this numerical ranking ... that just makes the differences look bigger than they actually are."
She said the new system has received praise by administrators and peer institutions, but admitted that the U.S. News rankings are more appealing to perspective college students and their parents.
Prager, however, said more broad rankings like this one are not necessarily the answer.
"I think one of the problems with rankings in general is that they purport to make generalizations that are not well founded," she said. "Whenever you do something that places schools in categories, it becomes misleading."
