Nearly forty years after their inception, the U.S. News rankings of colleges and universities continue to fascinate students, parents, and alumni. They receive millions of views annually, have spawned numerous imitators, spark ardent discussions on web forums like Quora, and have even outlived their namesake magazine, U.S. News & World Report, which last appeared in print in 2010.1

A selling point of the U.S. News rankings is that they claim to be based largely on uniform, objective figures like graduation rates and test scores. Twenty percent of an institution’s ranking is based on a “peer assessment survey” in which college presidents, provosts, and admissions deans are asked to rate other institutions, but the remaining 80% is based entirely on numerical data collected by the institution itself. Some of this is reported by colleges and universities to the government under Federal law, some of it is voluntarily released by these institutions to the public, and some of it is provided directly to U.S. News.

Like other faculty members at Columbia University, I have followed Columbia’s position in the U.S. News ranking of National Universities with considerable interest. It has been gratifying to witness Columbia’s steady rise from 18th place, on its debut in 1988, to the lofty position of 2nd place which it attained this year, surpassed only by Princeton and tied with Harvard and MIT.