Notre Dame is 18th in the latest U.S. News & World Report
college rankings but 13th using a new rating system developed
by four East Coast scholars.
The alternative system relies on what its developers call "revealed
preference ranking," that entails asking individual students which
colleges they prefer, one versus another. The U.S. News
rankings derive from such criteria as graduation rates and student-to-faculty
ratios, which are weighted to different degrees.
Critics argue that the statistics U.S. News uses can
be manipulated by college administrators to boost their ranking.
Notre Dame has traditionally been ranked at the far end of the
top 20 in the magazine's "national-universities-doctoral" category.
In the first test of the alternative system, which was developed
by researchers at Harvard, Boston University and the University
of Pennsylvania, Notre Dame finished 13th among all colleges and
universities and 11th if only doctorate-granting institutions
were considered.
(January 2005)
