The U.S. News and World Report ranking of America's best colleges released on Aug. 30, places Hopkins at 14 out of 248 fellow national research universities with an overall score of 85 out of the possible 100.
The ranking system is fairly static, preventing big jumps in status from year to year. That Hopkins has held onto its title of 14th for two years is relatively respectable, especially given that the university is slowly making its way up the ladder. Dean William Conley, the new Dean of Enrollment and academic services agrees, "It is hard given who is ahead of us -- Harvard, Princeton, Yale -- to gain any significant ground."
With growing concern for prestige among colleges, and growing competition among applicants, parents find they are paying for reputation rather than quality, and rankings only augment this importance placed on status.
The methods of collecting data for ratings have subsequently been adapted to account for plausible holes in the information disseminated, which result from the universities' heightened competition in advertising.
The flaws in the methodology of comparison result partly from this underlying competition between schools, rather than from the actual factors being assessed.
In order to compensate for the loose ends that allowed for dishonesty in self-assessment, a more objective system of comparison is reached this year with the removal of yield from the quantitative measure of academic quality.
Yield is the amount of students enrolling out of those students accepted (30 percent is normal, whereas anything in the 40 to 50 percent range is questionable).
Thus, the abolishment of yield lessens the tactical import of Early Decision, which schools began pushing with the knowledge that it could secure and increase the admissions rate, the yield.
Unfortunately, U.S. News dropped yield only to emphasize a more subjective criterion -- peer assessment -- which is given the largest factor of 25 percent of the overall score.
About 75 percent of a school's ranking is based on a formula, which uses measures of academic quality such as graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving and graduation rate performance.
According to U.S. News and World Report, the peer assessment survey, accounting for the remaining 25 percent, is given to the president, provost, and dean of admissions at each school to rate the quality of the academic programs for schools in the same category, including their own.
The inherent flaws of peer assessment, such as competition among schools and, on the flip side, the presence of tacit alliances, further diminish the guarantee of scrupulousness among administrators and increase reasons for skepticism when reading too far into the numbers and percentages.
Despite the weight placed on the intangible factor of peer assessment, the advent of the Common Data Set yields greater accountability and universal standards for self-assessment, as each school is expected to fill out extensive yearly questionnaires so that there is less room for fabrication or omission in such categories as SAT scores, acceptance rates and selectivity rates.
William Conley, dean of enrollment and academic services, a new position at Johns Hopkins as of 2002, oversees that the promises of Admissions are not proven false, and works to ensure that what is advertised in data banks like that of the U.S. News and World Report is in fact accurate.
Conley said he has been answering the question of the ranking's importance for 20 years.
And his answer remains the same: this year, even with the improved methodology of data acquisition, he continues to "find the rankings not to be a substitute for best fit, but merely to be a useful tool for the consumer."
Conley believes that the rankings allow prospective students to see that "although Hopkins may not be the best fit, it can be the right fit" as we are beginning to be seen as a "good alternative to the well-known and frequently unattainable Ivy League schools."
Regarding our equals, Cornell University and University of Chicago, Dean Conley believes "we are in good company."
Furthermore, Conley was pleased to note the improved alumni giving rank (25) and thus the improved average alumni giving rate (29 percent), which meant a more satisfied student body: it meant "that former students graduated and actually liked it here enough to give back to the place that truly gave something to them."
Although endowment or alumni giving can be seen as an extension of a school's merit, are such factors as financial resources and faculty resources really imperative and tangible facts that help one decide what school he or she wishes to attend?
Is a faculty member's salary really of interest to a prospective student (and by the way even faculty salary subjective in that it is based on region)?
So the question remains: how do we measure quality in education, and is this ranking one of those ways?
In the real world the value of reputation as a means of self-aggrandizement is a real concern, and so too is the school one graduates from.
For cynics, such as Robert Stevenson of Newsweek, rankings help instill "envy and emulation of the old" for what he deems "the new Harvards," or schools like Hopkins.
Those who are rejected from the "old elite...become a social force to broaden [what is considered to be] the elite," Stevenson said.
The U.S. News ratings are comparable to a list of People Magazine's most beautiful women or a travel magazine's list of the world's top 10 vacation resorts -- all of the lists are subjective.
Evelyn Bass, a Hopkins mom and a college counselor, agrees; in her counseling she finds the "ratings to not be a big tool, but rather one among many."
She believes in using them as a "guide but not as a Bible, because underneath the numbers, there is so much more to uncover."
