Chronicle of Higher Education
09-24-07
The Rankings Rainbow
By ERIC HOOVER
Bruce Hunter has seen them many times: the wide-eyed students and gaping
parents, frozen in the aisles of the bookstore. They come looking for college
guides and find rows and rows of choices, a growing number of which cater to
students of speci-fic backgrounds, beliefs, and identities. "There's this massive
shelf about the size of the Green Monster, and they have no clue where to start,"
says Mr. Hunter, director of college counseling at Rowland Hall-St. Mark's
School, in Salt Lake City.
In 1994, Mr. Hunter decided to help confused consumers by writing a guide to
(what else?) college guides. The project almost turned into a commercial book.
Had it been published, the project may or may not have made Mr. Hunter a rich
man, but it surely would have given him a lifelong hobby.
Over the last decade, the library of third-party information about colleges has
grown exponentially. U.S. News & World Report's annual college guide may get
the most attention, but it's a general-interest dinosaur in an ever-expanding realm
of niche evaluations of colleges. Now students of all faiths, ethnic origins, and
interests can find a guide or a set of rankings carefully compiled — or thrown
together — just for them.
For instance, Hispanic magazine ranks the top 25 colleges for Latino students.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has introduced a list of the 10 most
vegetarian-friendly campuses (Indiana University at Bloomington's sesamenoodle-and-peapod casserole earned it the No. 1 spot last year). And for
students who care about things like morality, the John Templeton Foundation
maintains a list of colleges that encourage character development.
In academe, diversity is a good thing, but what about in the hyped-up precollege
marketplace? Does this rainbow of resources have any real value?
Well, some. Mr. Hunter thinks guides and rankings that cater to specific groups
are useful for students, at least as starting points in the search process.
Teenagers, he says, usually appreciate materials that allow them to "train the
prism" through which they view themselves onto colleges and universities.
So a student who fancies herself a feminist might read The Young Woman's
Guide to the Top Colleges: What You Need to Know to Make the Best Choice
(John Wiley & Sons, 1998), which profiles 200 institutions. Or she might thumb
through CosmoGIRL! magazine's top-50 list of colleges for women, which is
based on Princeton Review data, student-survey results, and gender-specific
information. That's assuming she can get past the list of kissing tips.
As with any other consumer product, the quality of guides and rankings for
specific groups varies widely, as do their methodologies. Some, like Black
Enterprise magazine's "Top 50 Colleges for African-Americans," are based on a
quantitative process. For nearly a decade, the magazine has evaluated hundreds
of institutions by using a formula it describes as a "regression-based, weighted,
multiplicative index." It combines four variables: a college's percentage of
undergraduate black students; its five-year graduation rate for black students;
and its average scores in a survey that asks some 2,000 black college
administrators to rate the academic and social environments for black students
on other campuses. The most recent list put Florida A&M University in first place,
above Harvard University, which ranked fourth.
Thomas A. LaVeist, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University's School of
Public Health, says he created the list after observing that many of the top
colleges in the U.S. News guide had a relatively small number of black students.
"We really needed a resource where African-American students could see where
black students were having the best outcomes," says Mr. LaVeist.
The list was an instant hit. The January 1999 issue in which it made its debut
sold out. A diverse list of colleges — including Babson College, Cornell
University, and Morehouse College — have publicly touted their inclusion on the
list. Some colleges that were not ranked, or that did not make the top 10, took
notice. "We get lobbied," Mr. LaVeist says. "I tell them it's impossible to game the
system."
By contrast, the new Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students (Alyson Books,
2006) gives administrators advice on how to make their campuses more
accommodating of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. If followed,
the tips just might improve a college's "gay-point average" in the guide's list of
best colleges. (Colorado State University, Grinnell College, and Lawrence
University are among the guide's diverse list of 20 "best of the best" institutions,
which "boast the most outstanding accomplishments in LGBT progressiveness
across the United States.")
Some administrators get tired of phone calls from so-called guidesters and
ranksters, who are eager to make a buck or drum up publicity for respective
groups. "A couple have popped up that said they're going to write a guidebook,
and for only $19,000, we can be in it," says Monica C. Inzer, dean of admission
and financial aid at Hamilton College.
It's no wonder that some college officials take special-interest resourceslike
Princeton Review's Colleges With a Consciencewith a huge grain of salt. And it's
tempting to liken narrow, subjective guides to political talk-radio programs: full of
words that appeal to a limited audience and mean almost nothing.
But Jason Mattera, a spokesman for the Young America's Foundation, says his
organization's annual list of top-10 conservative colleges fills a crucial
informational void. The foundation created its guide in response to numerous
requests for college recommendations from families who seek a conservativefriendly campus and a traditional education (read: no courses on lesbian
authors). It's based partly on input from students and faculty members at different
colleges.
"We look for schools that don't have these high levels of political correctness,
schools focusing on the great books," Mr. Mattera says.
It's hard to imagine that someone would need a guide to tell him that Liberty
University, an evangelical Christian institution in Virginia, is welcoming of
conservatives. Still, making the list has cachet.
Glenn Dillard, assistant vice president for admission at Harding University, in
Arkansas, says officials there are proud that the university appears on the list, an
honor it has promoted in press releases. And that can't hurt recruiting. "It's a
good thing if it does cause students to put us on their long list," he says, "and
maybe after they get more information about us, they'll put us on their short list."
The other end of the political spectrum is well represented among publications.
Mother Jones magazine ranks the top-10 "activist schools," for instance, and
High Times magazine ranks the top-10 "countercultural colleges." Yet these
cursory lists are mere entertainment and won't tell a student much. An applicant
couldn't use them to determine if, say, the University of Iowa is more accepting of
liberals or marijuana enthusiasts than Iowa State University is, since neither
appears on the lists.
As opinionated lists of colleges proliferate in the information age, the cumulative
effect seems to be confusion. Amid all the guides and rankings, many students
say you still can't learn much about a campus unless you visit it. Elisheva
Layman, a senior at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, in Rockville, Md.,
has little use for the dozens of brochures she's received from colleges, or for
heavy guidebooks. "I'll flip through them, but they're not insanely helpful," she
says.
Instead, she sought out Hillel's "Guide to Jewish Life on Campus," an online
database that lists the estimated population of Jewish students at about 700
colleges, as well as information about religious services and kosher dining
options at each institution. While determining which colleges she wanted to visit,
Ms. Layman used the database to see what Jewish-studies classes a particular
college offered and what types of social activities were available to Jewish
students.
The database is the most-visited part of the organization's Web site, according to
Jeff Rubin, associate vice president for communications at Hillel. It was designed
as an antidote to sales pitches. "Students," Mr. Rubin says, "have very sensitive
noses to marketing materials."
Where does all that marketing stop?
Mr. Hunter, the counselor who compiled the guide to guides, sees no end in
sight. Only his book is one that's not coming to a Barnes & Noble near you.
A while back, Mr. Hunter met with a half-dozen publishers who were interested in
his project, but there was a snag: They wanted assurances that he would write
nice things about the college guides in their product lines.
Mr. Hunter wasn't interested in that approach, so he decided to scale down his
guide to a short, annotated bibliography — a handy reference that still circulates
among high-school counselors throughout the nation. "I'm happy I killed the book
when I did," he says. "As labor intensive as it was to do all the research 13 years
ago, it would be substantially more so now."