The U.S. News & World Report issued the 2008 edition of its illustrious "America's Best Colleges" list Friday and Dartmouth dropped out of the top ten -- from a three-way tie for ninth to eleventh, behind the two with whom it had shared ninth. Dartmouth amounted a score of 89 out of 100 in the U.S. News algorithm, one point away from its former position. Hopefully no one will attempt to interpret this fall from the hallowed top ten as demonstrative of a real drop-off at the College.
The easily red-flagged difference in the College's marks this year is its score in peer assessment, which the U.S. News rankings algorithm weights as 25 percent of the final score. The peer assessment score comes from a survey in which administrators at other schools are asked to rate the quality of each school on a scale from 1 to 5. This year Dartmouth dropped to 4.3 from 4.4 in 2007. The question worth examining is if this drop reflects some real newfound deficiencies or if it is likely something else, such as recent publicity of College infighting or statistical variation. Given that most of those who filled out the survey are not intimately familiar with Dartmouth -- just as they are not intimately familiar with most of the schools they rate -- it is impossible to conclude the former. To nail down the actual source of this change would be both frivolous and impossible. The main takeaway from this drop is that the ranking says little substantial about the state of the College, just as it did when Dartmouth was ninth.
