Brown and College Rankings

Ivy Coach is featured today in Brown University’s newspaper.

Ivy Coach is featured today on the pages of “The Brown Daily Herald,” the newspaper of Brown University. A piece by Alex Skidmore entitled “Poll shows college rankings widely used by applicants” highlights the prominent roll that college rankings carry in the highly selective college admissions process. In fact, a poll conducted by the Brown University newspaper of current Brown students found that less than 5% of students didn’t look at college rankings during the admissions process, while about a third of students stated the rankings were a strong factor in their decisions. And for a bit less than half of Brown students polled, it was acknowledged that the rankings were a minor factor in their decision. So if you add up the students for whom the rankings were a factor, even if minor, it’s indeed the vast majority.

As Skidmore writes in the piece, “‘It would be a losing battle to try to persuade students to ignore the rankings,’ said Brian Taylor, director of Ivy Coach, a college consulting company. College rankings can be a defining factor for students when they decide to apply to and attend a certain school, he said. Though the lists provide valuable information, they are ‘all about prestige,’ Taylor said. ‘People love to rank things.'” They sure do.

So, yes, the results of the poll conducted by “The Brown Daily Herald” make a lot of sense to us. And just think of how many students may not have wanted to admit the rankings factored into their college decisions. But today is not a day for polling. Today is a day for voting. We’re With Her. Non-sequitur? Deal with it. And let’s: Deal. Her. In.