According to the New York Times in an article from late January, many colleges are making up their numbers of applicants, how many were accepted, and the average GPA of accepted students. Ultimately, their goal is to rank higher in the US News & World Report.
"Gaming the College Rankings"
The NY Times took a unique approach of classifying the college ranking systems as a game--a game in which cheating will put institutions ahead of others. It's true, the competition to get into colleges is insane; here at the University of Michigan, we can all attest to that. What's even more interesting is the competition between colleges and universities to look better to prospective students.
You can read the article for yourself. The big question--how much do these rankings actually matter to prospective students? Clearly enough to fuel lying to US News & World Report, and cheating, if you will. This simply continues the cycle of insanity that goes into the college selection process among students, their parents, and their counselors. Perhaps the "college game" is beginning to get a little out of hand.
This post really surprised me. I would not have guessed that colleges would cheat these numbers. I guess it makes sense it gives them an easy way to try to get ahead I just didn't think they could actually get away with it. I would have thought that the people who come out with the report would double check the numbers that colleges send in and not just trust them to send in right ones. It is interesting and unfortunate that students looking for colleges can't even truest information that is very important towards thier decision of what college to attend.
ReplyDeleteBrennan Ouellette- Team Fame
I heard about the college ranking scandal that took place at Claremont McKenna a few weeks ago. However, I didn't realize that the problem was so pervasive and that multiple other colleges had also engaged in falsifying information to move up the rankings. I think it's not that difficult to get away with either; Claremont was only caught because the school's president eventually noticed a discrepancy in SAT score. I think rankings definitely matter to prospective students at least in terms of narrowing down the schools to which they want to apply to, at least that's what many of my friends did. After narrowing down the schools, they then chose the one they wanted to attend based on how they perceived the academics and how they felt they would fit in. I think that Stephen Garcia's guest lecture on competition applies to how Claremont felt inferior to Pomona because the two schools are in very close proximity in location and in rankings, leading to high competition.
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