How influential are national college rankings?

A senior administrator at Claremont McKenna College, a distinguished liberal arts school in California, resigned on Jan. 30 after he admitted to submitting false SAT score data to U.S. News & World Report for the past six years, the New York Times reported. The college was ranked No. 9 on the Best Liberal Arts College list.

"Being in the top 50 liberal arts colleges is certainly important," said Nanci Tessier, vice president for enrollment management at the University of Richmond. "Is the difference between being No. 33 and No. 32 significant?" Tessier said. "No."

Tessier said she did not think false reporting of SAT scores was a widespread problem.

During the past four years, Richmond has moved from No. 33 to No. 27 on U.S. News & World Report's list of Best National Liberal Arts College Rankings. But Tessier said that she had not felt pressure to achieve a particular ranking on the list.

Tessier said she had not thought Richmond's improved rank had caused the record-breaking number of applicants for the class of 2016.

"We're not driven by the rankings at Richmond," Tessier said. "If hiring new faculty helps us in the ratings, it's a benefit, but we're not investing in more faculty to improve our rankings. "We construct a program here that we believe is in the best interest of our students."

While Tessier explained that Richmond was not driven by ratings, she noted that the ratings may still be influential on the academic reputation of the school.

The U.S. News & World Report's ranking methodology considers undergraduate academic reputation as 20 percent of its evaluation of a school, according to its website.

To measure the reputation, presidents, provosts and deans of admissions rated the academic programs of other schools on a scale of one to five, according to the website.

Tessier said the data-gathering process made it difficult to determine whether the opinions of presidents, provosts and deans were influenced by personal knowledge about the school or past rankings from newsmagazines. If their opinions are derived from past rankings of the school rather than knowledge about the school, ratings would be playing a big role in the U.S. News and World Report methodology, however, it is difficult to determine, she said.

Clay Palmer said he thought rankings played an important role in his assessment of a school when he chose to transfer to Richmond for his sophomore year.

"You want to have pride in name of your school, UR has that, it has a strong reputation," Palmer said.

Tessier said she understood that people may use college rankings in their initial research to get a sense of institutions but she did not think rankings were the determining factor when students make their final decision. Tessier added she thought personal fit was more important.

When giving tours for the Richmond admissions office, Mike Zebrowski said that many prospective students and their parents were aware that the Robins School of Business was ranked No. #12 on Bloomberg Businessweek Best Undergraduate Business Schools 2011.

"The number only says so much," Zebrowski said. "They want to know more."

Zebrowski said families on his tours were more interested to learn that the availability of his professors in the business school was his favorite part about the school, not the ranking.

"I'm not a data-machine" Zebrowski said.

The Art & Science Group, an institution for marketing intelligence in higher education, found that only 18 percent of students and 32 percent of parents said newsmagazine rankings had a significant impact on their decision about where to apply and enroll.

Regardless, Richard A. Hesel, publisher of the survey, said "many institutions continue to behave as if US News has their fate in its hands."

Tessier said, "The study is reassuring because what it says to me is that students and parents understand the complexity of the process and they use rankings as one piece of it but it is far from the top of the list as sources for information and making decisions."

Tessier said her one criticism for any kind of ranking on best colleges was that the list never addresses, "the best college... for whom?"

"We recognize that rankings are one piece in the puzzle," Tessier said. However, to explain the record-breaking number of applications at Richmond, she said, "Admissions has been doing outstanding research in terms of identifying students that are the best fit for Richmond and communicating effectively with them."

Contact staff writer Madeline Small at madeline.small@richmond.edu.