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The Daily OrangeU.S. News & World Report ranks SU 53rd, position slips from last year
By Ryan Balton
Posted: 9/3/08, 1:22 AM EST Section: News
"The students should not use the rankings as the sole reason to attend a school or not," he said. "They should only be used as one tool in the student's deciding to go to a school or not go to a school."
Dana Schwartz, a freshman to major in psychology, agreed. She found college visits to be more helpful in making her choice.
"I feel like I visited schools who were ranked higher than what Syracuse was, and they made a bad impression," she said.
She and Zach Levandov, an undeclared freshman in the College of Human Ecology, said they thought SU's ranking should be higher.
"The rankings are just numbers," Levandov said.
The three-point drop for SU is nothing to worry about, Morse said.
"Your school has bounced around the same level for a number of years, so it's ranking is pretty stable," he said.
If it continues to go down little by little in the future, Morse said there could be cause for alarm, but for now he sees no downward trend over the past five years.
The process for rankings each year starts in January. The eight-month process lasts until August, while U.S. News conducts surveys to collect data from schools, including quantitative data like graduation rate and freshmen admissions data, Morse said.
College administrators also complete reputation surveys, a method that raised controversy in May 2007 when college presidents across the country signed a letter criticizing the report and refusing to complete surveys of their peers.
At the end of the process, Morse compares the data from all of the schools among their peer institutions. SU, for example, is compared only to other research and doctoral granting universities.
"People need to understand: Are the rankings accurate?" he said. "They're accurate in the sense that they're measuring the relative merits of the schools using the set of variables and the weights that we've chosen."
Cristina Luiggi, a graduate student at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, questioned the ranking system.
"I'm skeptical about it," she said. "You have your top schools that are great at everything, I guess, but then other schools have their really good department, and so the ranking - the whole general ranking thing - what does that even mean?"
Susan E. Donovan, SU dean of admissions, is on vacation and unavailable for comment.
rsbalton@syr.edu
Dana Schwartz, a freshman to major in psychology, agreed. She found college visits to be more helpful in making her choice.
"I feel like I visited schools who were ranked higher than what Syracuse was, and they made a bad impression," she said.
She and Zach Levandov, an undeclared freshman in the College of Human Ecology, said they thought SU's ranking should be higher.
"The rankings are just numbers," Levandov said.
The three-point drop for SU is nothing to worry about, Morse said.
"Your school has bounced around the same level for a number of years, so it's ranking is pretty stable," he said.
If it continues to go down little by little in the future, Morse said there could be cause for alarm, but for now he sees no downward trend over the past five years.
The process for rankings each year starts in January. The eight-month process lasts until August, while U.S. News conducts surveys to collect data from schools, including quantitative data like graduation rate and freshmen admissions data, Morse said.
College administrators also complete reputation surveys, a method that raised controversy in May 2007 when college presidents across the country signed a letter criticizing the report and refusing to complete surveys of their peers.
At the end of the process, Morse compares the data from all of the schools among their peer institutions. SU, for example, is compared only to other research and doctoral granting universities.
"People need to understand: Are the rankings accurate?" he said. "They're accurate in the sense that they're measuring the relative merits of the schools using the set of variables and the weights that we've chosen."
Cristina Luiggi, a graduate student at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, questioned the ranking system.
"I'm skeptical about it," she said. "You have your top schools that are great at everything, I guess, but then other schools have their really good department, and so the ranking - the whole general ranking thing - what does that even mean?"
Susan E. Donovan, SU dean of admissions, is on vacation and unavailable for comment.
rsbalton@syr.edu
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Olin MacGregor
posted 9/03/08 @ 9:15 PM EST
Chancellor Cantor could care less about academic rating status quo , let alone back slippage -- Cantor has already learned how to thumb her boney rear end at alums, bring in her own Trustees, and politicize her chair as a highly liberal Democratic Upstate NY pol. (Continued…)
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