Harvard slipping down the Forbes college rankings? Impossible! Yet this year’s list of America’s Top Colleges, published in late August, confirms the shocking news: Harvard is no longer in the top ten.
After Forbes redesigned its metrics in 2021, a number of Ivy League schools dropped in their rankings. The same can be said for the influential U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) rankings, which took Columbia off its list for misrepresenting data. This September, US News announced that Columbia was positioned as #18 in the latest rankings—a significant drop after being tied for the #2 spot last year. Top Tier Senior Private Counselor and former Cornell Assistant Director of Admissions, Heidi Steinmetz Lovette dove into what this really means for students in her post, “Columbia Unranked: Interpreting College Rankings.”
WHAT HAPPENED?
The Forbes list is heavily weighted towards outcomes of graduates, retention, and number of Pell Grant recipients. Falling retention rates (Harvard’s three-year average retention rate from freshman to sophomore year dropped by approximately 8%, from 98% to 90%.) and a low number of Pell Grant recipients (which according to Forbes provides “insight into how well a college prepares and graduates low-income students”) contributed mightily to Harvard’s fall from #2 to #15 in 2022.
PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE
Five public universities, including the University of California, San Diego and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, made it into the top 25 on this year’s Forbes list. UC Berkeley earned the #2 spot, tied with Stanford, and UCLA came in at #6. Many other public institutions, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Michigan State University, rose over 10 spots on the list due to their top scores when it comes to “return on investment” and student debt. These “percent borrowed” variables used by Forbes in their calculations give public schools an edge on private colleges.
DO COLLEGE RANKINGS REALLY MATTER?
Will this affect Harvard’s application numbers? Unlikely. This is a good reminder, however, that college rankings are merely one metric to consider as part of your larger search. In fact, Harvard’s dramatic drop from #2 to #15 reveals just how easily these rankings can be manipulated. The Top Tier Admissions Private Counseling Program looks beyond these rankings to help students identify which factors matter most to them. We will help you create a personalized college application strategy that prioritizes personal “fit,” the most important metric of all.
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8 replies on “Forbes College Rankings Shake-Up: Harvard Dethroned”
I don’t think anyone- I mean ANYONE- believes Harvard is #15 in any best college poll, unless is is sports. This Forbes Ranking is RIDICULOUS. Harvard has to be in top 5, minimum. The most accurate ranking in my humble opinion is WALL STREET JOURNAL Best College List. Please take a look at that and tell me that is not a more accurate ranking in the minds of the American public- and that is what really counts. WSJ is the most accurate ranking- hands down.
Thank you for your comments. Please see Michele’s reply below. Many thanks!
This is a really good article. The students promoted by private high schools to go to the top universities are students with legacies or from big donor families or big donor companies. Some of these students are good but the overwhelming majority are mediocre and some are just bad students. Private schools “sell” these spots and block free competition among students to make the selected students look good to admission officers.The really good students who win awards in honest completions are placed in very good but lesser universities. Everybody gets hurt; the receiving top universities get a bad image among HS Seniors – including Harvard and MIT. Students are disillusioned about free competition and understand that abilities and academics lose every time against money. The HS-promoted students lose as they do not do well in tough schools (Harvard is not among those) or get bad grades and cannot pursue graduate studies. The good students are disillusioned and start questioning ethics but usually are very good and continue to graduate studies in the top universities. COVID made things even worse as SAT and other objective criteria were hidden in the past two years.
Forbes list ranking Harvard #15 is rather ridiculous. Everyone kind of dislikes Harvard either due personal jealousies or just sick of hearing of its stature in America, from its own academic prowess or the arrogance of its graduates (not all, of course). “They say a Harvard graduate can’t go 5 minutes into a conversation without mentioning they went to Harvard”. BUT, Harvard deserves at the very least a Top 5 Ranking. Absent that, you are not a serious ranking. Nobody believes Harvard is #15 in any academic poll. The Wall Street Journal Poll is absolutely the most accurate ranking in the minds of Americans, far mores than US News, who continually ranks Johns Hopkins, Wash U and Northwestern ahead of several Ivies. And the fact that most people never heard of Wash U IS reason to rank it lower. People go to the best colleges they can get in to make money. Oh, you can say all you want, but nobody goes to college to make the same amount without a degree. Salaries and competitive grad school acceptance rates should be the #1 criteria. None of the aforementioned schools outrank the Ivies, as phony as it sounds. and LEAST of all Harvard!
Thanks for your comments. Our point wasn’t to endorse the ranking or argue its merit. As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out a few years ago in an excellent New Yorker article, rankings are all subjective, depending on the exact criteria and how much you weight each one. Changing even one ranking or weight shuffles every single ranking so you have to read how every publication establishes criteria. We think that every ranking is interesting so long as you take the time to read about the criteria. Every reader will have a different opinion on what criteria are important to them.
In my opinion, the best element of college education is the competency and competitiveness of the students in a specific college. Why do you think Harvard stoped looking at and publishing SAT scores? With 48% of its students on the Dean’s financial interest list and 60% admission rate among legacy applicants do you think that Harvard admits good students?
We agree with your general point about quality of the class but your legacy numbers are way off – the NY Times analysis shows a current 14% legacy acceptance rate:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/us/legacy-admissions-colleges-universities.html, not 60%.
The quality of Harvard’s class is still pretty stellar – the point of our post was to show how capricious rankings are depending on which data points you weight more. Thank you!
In reply to Roy:
You know nothing of what you’re posting about. I attended Harvard years ago, on scholarship. All three of our children were admitted to Harvard, based on their outstanding academic records and personal qualities: only one decided to attend, the other two went elsewhere. The one who did go to Harvard compiled outstanding grades, rowed on the heavyweight varsity crew for three years (had never rowed before), was named the top male scholar-athlete in his senior year, and won a scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge in England. His experience confirmed what I had learned nearly three decades earlier: that we learned more from our daily interactions with our fellow students than we did in the classrooms.