Duke students are used to being rated at the top--from sports teams' successes to college rankings. A selectivity-based college ranking system described in the November issue of The Atlantic Monthly, however, puts Duke in 14th place, behind such schools as Swarthmore College and Washington University in St. Louis.
University officials said they are not worried about the newest rankings, which place Duke nine spots lower than do the latest rankings by U.S. News and World Report.
"It's hard for me to imagine someone saying, 'Well I was going to apply to Duke, but now that I see they are 14th in The Atlantic Monthly selectivity rating, I think I won't,'" said Christoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions. "I do not think that our ranking in yet another list will materially affect our applications."
This is the first time The Atlantic Monthly has released college rankings. The rankings are based on schools' admissions rates and the SAT scores and high school class ranks of matriculating freshmen.
Unlike the popular college rankings from U.S. News and World Report, The Atlantic Monthly's list lumps national universities with liberal arts colleges and does not consider such factors as retention rates, faculty resources and alumni-giving rates. In the article accompanying the rankings, the magazine noted that the selectivity rankings were complied "by way of experiment," and could be used to demonstrate how "the neat hierarchy of selectivity begins to fall apart... when one looks more closely."
John Sullivan, president of The Atlantic Monthly, told The New York Times last week that the inclusion of college rankings was meant to target a teenage audience and, as a result, their parents. This, he said, is an important step in increasing the readership of the magazine, which has been losing millions of dollars in recent years.
"As we try to build circulation and readership, those [teenagers and their parents] are two very important categories for us," Sullivan said in the article in The New York Times.
College administrators are quick to point out Sullivan's comments and believe that the college rankings are as much about making money as they are about assisting students in finding the right college.
"In the end of the day, this magazine and others are really all about selling magazines," said John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations.
Guttentag said he thought the rankings could not be truly meaningful in a student's college search.
"One might be able to rank conceivably very small units of an institution, but the whole point of the college selection process is to create a good match between a student and a college," he said. "To suggest that one college or another is a better match based on some overall set of criteria that have almost nothing to do with a student's experience at that school is almost ridiculous."
Both Guttentag and Burness said the magazine rankings should--and do--have little influence over whether a student actually enrolls at a university.
However, Tom Krattenmaker, director of public relations for Swarthmore College, said although he does not necessarily agree with the process of ranking colleges, he believes the extra press will be helpful for the school. Swarthmore--third among liberal arts colleges in U.S. News and World Report--placed 10th in The Atlantic Monthly's ratings, above such schools as Duke, Dartmouth College and Cornell University.
"We know that prospective students, especially international students who aren't as familiar with the higher education landscape in America, might show interest in our school as a result of these rankings," Krattenmaker said.
Although Krattenmaker was hopeful that The Atlantic Monthly's press would result in an increase of applications to Swarthmore, he, like Guttentag, doubted that it would have any real effect.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.