Prospective college students looking for Columbia in the US News and World Report (USNWR) college rankings will have to keep scrolling—the Ivy League institution in New York City is no longer listed. Following a Columbia professor’s accusations and a follow-up internal investigation into the accuracy of the school’s self-reported data, Columbia decided to withdraw from the 2023 rankings before ultimately being pulled outright by USNWR. Columbia went from being tied for #2 with Harvard and MIT to being excluded from the 2022 list altogether. Columbia’s second-place ranking was a key driver in the sky-high 60,377 applications the university received for its Class of 2026 which resulted in acceptance rates of 2.98% for Regular Decision, 10.3% for Early Decision, and 3.73% overall.
COOKING THE NUMBERS
Columbia’s alleged data fudging highlights how deeply colleges care about their rankings. As imperfect as these ranking systems are, they remain a prominent method of quickly assessing a college’s desirability. Columbia is not the only school that has gone to great lengths to move up in the rankings. In his book Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions, Jeffrey Selingo reports how former President Richard Freeland and other Northeastern officials mathematically evaluated the USNWR ranking criteria and implemented strategic measures to improve the school’s position. For example, by capping enrollment for many classes at 19 to meet the criteria for small class size, Northeastern saw its USNWR ranking rise meteorically over two decades from 162 to 49th.
Columbia is not the first school to submit questionable data tailored to improve their ranking. Recent public cases of inaccurate data, however, involved specialized graduate programs—notably USC’s Rossier School of Education and Temple University’s Fox School of Business. Columbia’s punitive removal from the prominent USNWR ranking system over data integrity concerns is a first for any top-ranked undergraduate institution.
HOW THE RANKINGS WORK
Although USNWR claims that “Only thoroughly vetted academic data from our surveys and reliable third-party sources are used to calculate each ranking factor,” the reality is that colleges self-report their data, which are not authenticated independently. Columbia was not entirely truthful when calculating metrics like undergraduate class sizes, instructional expenditures (notably lumping in clinical costs from its medical school), and the highest credentials of its faculty: all key metrics that go into USNWR’s algorithm.
The criteria used by the two most prominent ranking systems—USNWR and Forbes—have changed over time (see our blog “Do College Rankings Really Matter” on shifts during the pandemic) but the weight they give to each category is public knowledge:
| The USNWR ranking is based on 10 main categories: | The Forbes ranking is based on 7 main categories: |
| 20% Reputation/Peer Survey | 20% Alumni Salary |
| 20% Faculty Resources (Class Size, Degrees) | 15% Student Loan Debt |
| 17.6% 6-year Graduation Rate | 15% 6-year Graduation Rate |
| 10% Financial Resources per Student | 15% Forbes American Leaders List |
| 8% Graduation Rate Predictability | 15% Return on Investment |
| 7% Student Selectivity (SAT/ACT, Class Rank) | 10% Future Academic Success |
| 5% Debt Indebtedness | 10% Retention Rate |
| 5% Social Mobility/Pell Grants | |
| 4.4% Retention Rate | |
| 3% Alumni Giving |
Comparing these criteria highlights several key points:
- Neither acceptance rate (selectivity) nor yield rate (% of those admitted who accept) are part of the equation, despite common myths about admissions practices being driven by those metrics to improve rankings.
- Only two criteria are shared by these two most prominent ranking agencies: 6-year Graduation Rate and Retention Rate (% of students returning for second year).
- Neither list takes into account academic strengths, location, dorms, clubs, advising, or food—the features often highlighted on a campus tour. The Forbes list is heavily weighted towards outcomes of graduates, while the USNWR list relies more on perceptions of prestige through its peer survey of college presidents (for which it has often come under pointed criticism).
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WHAT AN UNRANKED COLUMBIA MEANS FOR APPLICANTS
A key lesson from this scandal is that these lists are imperfect and incomplete guides to a college’s overall quality. Unranked, Columbia provides exactly the same education it did when it was ranked #2. As a Columbia undergraduate, if you are fortunate to have Nobel Prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk as your professor, you probably won’t care that he doesn’t have a Ph.D. Similarly, it does not matter much whether you have 22 or 19 students in your first-year seminar.
Rankings, by definition, rely on an overly simplistic numerical hierarchy. Each college or university has hundreds of programs and resources and serves thousands of students. Reducing this variability and complexity into a simple comparative ranking masks most of the attributes that make each institution special. The oversimplification of the ratings is particularly salient for applicants with strong, specific, or special interests. Focusing on the overall rankings alone, you overlook the fact that particular schools, including those lower on the overall list, often have world-class programs in specialized areas.
BEYOND THE RANKINGS: HOW TO FIND A BEST-FIT SCHOOL
Early in the college search process, you need to go beyond the numerical rankings and delve into the factors that matter most to you. This is why we emphasize doing careful research that prioritizes your personal “fit” when crafting a wise college admissions strategy. For personalized coaching to find the college where you will thrive, and for help crafting a winning application strategy to get you there, contact us today about our Private Counseling Program.
After attending Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California, Heidi graduated cum laude with an Honors thesis from Dartmouth College as a double major in Classical Archaeology and Comparative Literature. At the University of Pennsylvania, Heidi was a Williams Fellow in the graduate program of Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World. She has conducted archaeological field work in Sardinia, Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey.
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