Vast network of lies keeps Hopkins ranked low

There is one day every year that unites high-school students, college students and parents all over the United States. You'd think it'd be something like Christmas or New years or even Labor Day.

But, no, it's the release of U.S. News and World Report's college rankings that fuses Americans together. High-schoolers anxiously flip through the pages and study the stats in hopes of discovering the mysteries of the application process. College-goers jump straight to the listings - what number are we this year? Parents carefully analyze things like the faculty-student ratio and retention rates and things that we students don't really care about.

But what concerns us most right now is not anything you can find in these seemingly arbitrary statistics. What we want to know is what lies beyond these rankings, past this article and further than this magazine.

We yearn to know why Hopkins has drastically declined among the ranks. What has happened over the past two years that has caused our alma mater to falter? Sure, we've heard the rumors about alumnae giving. We fell for it too - at first. How na?ve we were! Finally, after much investigation, we are glad to report to you, we have uncovered the conspiracy.

It started about two years ago. The editors of US News found themselves in an awful predicament. Their deadline for the coveted "America's Best Colleges" was quickly approaching. They had to make decisions and fast. So, they turned to the source and hired college interns.

They tried to be fair about it, hiring three ethnically-diverse Princeton students. Their job was fairly simple. They would travel to each university and take notes on what they encountered. It seemed perfect to the editors. And it almost was.

Just like every other year, the issue was printed and dispersed, causing the usual uproar among top-tier schools. We found it funny that Princeton had jumped to No.1 this year, while we plummeted all the way to sixteenth. We knew we had to investigate. The editors claim, "a school's ranking is based on a formula that uses objective measures of academic quality and a reputational survey."

We found that to be false. What we did find was an actual list made by the US News editors of the nine reasons why Hopkins was bumped nine spaces from seventh to 16th.

9. Student tuition does not include such amenities as phone service, Ethernet or cable, but their hard earned dollars do provide for some real pretty brick walkways.

8. This year we were considering releasing a list of the top 100 colleges with the best looking co-eds on campus. Let's just say even if it had been out of 500, Hopkins still wouldn't have made it.

7. Does that even count as Division 3? My Grandma plays football better than them.

6. All-you-can-eat Taco Bell doesn't constitute a well-balanced meal.

5. Any college town that called itself "The City that Reads," but had an illiteracy rate of 38 percent, isn't suited to be in the top ten. Any town than redeems itself by calling it "The Greatest City in America" but hasn't had anything to show for it is just plain unpatriotic.

4. The T.A.'s get more action than the students.

3. It seems that the "study rooms" in the library are being used for anything but studying. Truly, everything is done in the library.

2. As if the kids at this school weren't anti-social enough, they had to lure them to the dining halls by installing computers. God forbid they converse with each other.

1. Normally a beach has fantastically hot men and women, sand, sun and surf. At Hopkins, the beach is a stretch of grass where you can find students who have momentarily joined society before retreating back into the depths of Orgo.

Well - now that we think about it, maybe U.S. News and World Report does have the right idea.