What makes something the “best?”

It’s a question that has plagued philosophers, statisticians, and neurotic members of the Applying to College subreddit.

Let’s use an example of a different ranking to illustrate the point of the subjectivity of the very notion of rankings.

What U.S. state would you rank as #1?

California, for its massive economy, generally mild weather, and outsize influence on popular culture? New York, for having the largest, most cosmopolitan city in the country and access to the Acela corridor’s top-paying jobs? Hawaii, because, well Hawaii?

According to the U.S. News & World Report, the #1 state is none other than this author’s home state: Utah.

Now, as a native, I will defend the perks of the Beehive State: the hiking really is unparalleled. We rarely deal with humidity, and the capital city’s job market is strong. I graduated from college without debt.

But that “first” ranking obscures some intangible negatives, too. The air quality can be atrocious in the winter. The urban architecture, like in all Western states’ cities, is underwhelming, and the cuisine is dominated by homogeneous chains. Utah is often ranked #50 as a state for women to work, and the “vibe” is rather parochial

So, should you move to Utah on a whim based on a #1 number ranking by U.S. News? That would be kind of impulsive, right? So keep this marketing scheme (which my governor is all-too-happy to tout) in mind about why college rankings aren’t completely worthless, but also should have basically no influence in your decision making.

Who’s ranked number 1 in colleges? The answer won’t shock you

Ask a naive person what the best college in the U.S. is, and they would probably choose from a university in the Ivy League, M.I.T., CalTech, or Stanford.

These are the universities with the most prestige, history, and not insignificantly, money in the country — you don’t need a near-defunct online magazine to assign a quantitative value to what boils down to myriad qualitative factors.

None other than the author of what’s often considered the #1 novel in America, F. Scott Fitzgerald, wrote his debut roman à clef about his alma mater, Princeton, and then, as now, it was a metonym for so much more than “good school,” but a glittering beacon of privilege that, as a child of the downwardly mobile middle class, Scott never emotionally recovered from. Princeton represented “the best,” and that obsession defined him as a writer and as a man, long past the age it’s becoming. As he said in his first novel, This Side of Paradise:

“From the first Amory loved Princeton — its lazy beauty, its half-grasped significance, the wild moonlight revel of the rushes, the handsome, prosperous big-game crowds”

Princeton is number 1 in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings … but, so what? (Fitzgerald dropped out of the college in his fourth year and spent more time composing musical comedies than anything else as a senior.)

Obsessing over others’ perception of the ranking of your college is pretentious at best and a sign of anxiety at worst. College, you might recall, is a place where you pursue education, and not just a backdrop for football games and rush week.

The movement is in the next tier — why that matters, and why it’s misleading

Last year, U.S. News made internal changes to their weighting algorithm, so some public colleges moved up a few slots and others tumbled. Columbia falling from #2 to #18 came about because a whistleblower, a mathematics professor at Columbia himself, exposed that they were gaming the system.

So, the rankings are not an “objective” measure of educational quality — in light of that, what do we suggest doing instead?

Look for a good fit — not a status marker

Every student is different. Some students are extroverts, and thrive on a campus with football games, student councils to join, and large lectures. Some students are pumped up for very specialized programs, such as robotics or international policy, and those resources would only be available at some schools. Plenty are not entirely sure what they want, and glom on to a college campus based on not much information at all.

Rather than hyper-fixating on THE ranking of the school you’re looking at, look at its sub-rankings in some of the following areas:

• best value for the money and financial aid available
• attention given to undergrads vs graduate students
• ranking in the discipline your student is most excited by
• geographic and lifestyle considerations of the campus
• four-year graduation rate and salary upon graduation

Maybe Princeton or a similar school will be both an excellent school AND the best fit for your student — but we’d encourage every applicant to keep an open mind about the entire college experience beyond just a numerical ranking.

Another great American novelist, Wallace Stegner, did his graduate work at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, taught at Harvard and the University of Wisconsin, and founded the creative writing program at Stanford. But, like a lot of working class kids (his mother was an immigrant and his father was a volatile man) with great academic records, he opted to stay in-state at the University of Utah. He recorded his memories of majoring in English at the “U” years later, after the Pulitzer:

I am coming along Thirteenth East on my way to an eight o’clock class. It is a marvelous morning – it is always a marvelous morning, whether the air is hazy with autumn and the oakbrush on the Wasatch has gone bronze and gold, or whether the chestnut trees along the street are coned with blossoms … I am enveloped in a universal friendliness. I turn at the drugstore on Second South and start uphill toward the Park Building at the head of the U drive.

Not a bad outcome from humble beginnings.

How do you choose the best college experience? You make the best with the materials you’re given. Reach out to us at Mindspire if you don’t know where to begin building a college list with your student.

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