No better way to start the brand new semester than to come in at #1 in US News & World Report’s Big Important List of College Rankings That May Or May Not Mean Anything— and for once, we’re not tied with Harvard!
Putting schools on top of other schools. Because if we couldn’t, our society would be nothing more than a meaningless body of men that gather together for no good purpose!
The methodology of the US News & World Report Rankings is something as follows (from Malcolm Gladwell’s 2011 analysis):
1. Undergraduate academic reputation, 22.5 per cent
2. Graduation and freshman retention rates, 20 per cent
3. Faculty resources, 20 per cent
4. Student selectivity, 15 per cent
5. Financial resources, 10 per cent
6. Graduation rate performance, 7.5 per cent
7. Alumni giving, 5 per cent
Notice that the biggest contributing factor is “reputation,” which Gladwell criticized as being nebulous and tautological, because it’s essentially ranking driven by name brands, which are in turn driven by rankings, which in turn are driven by monkeys or something. We’re okay with that though, if it suits us. Princeton number one, woo! First place, baby! Let’s totally forget that we were last in terms of racial integration among the Ivies. Oops. Shh. It should be noted that of the top 10 schools, Princeton’s tuition is (marginally) the lowest, and our financial aid is definitely the best.
In other news, surveys of Harvard’s incoming class of 2017 show that more Harvard freshman have cheated on their homework than have had sex. Or, as DS ’14 comments: “They’re probably over-reporting on the sex and under-reporting on the cheating, so it really REALLY sucks to go to Harvard.”
Welcome back Tigers!