Amherst students and alumni hoping for the College to regain its first place title in U.S. News and World Report's annual college rankings report were disappointed this past summer to see rival Williams College at the top of the liberal arts college rankings list. Williams has maintained its spot on the top of the list for five consecutive years thus far.
By and large, the College's performance and associated statistics were on par with or better than those of Williams. Williams outperformed Amherst in student/faculty ratio, faculty resources and class size.
The publication of this year's list followed a decision made by the presidents of 80 liberal arts colleges to stop cooperating with U.S. News. The presidents, members of the Annapolis Group, an association of liberal arts colleges, announced their decisions at the end of the organization's annual meeting. Some arguments that have been raised against the U.S. News ranking are that the ranking system lacks rigor and has a harmful effect on educational priorities.
The group also has plans to develop its own system of comparing institutions. It hopes to work with other higher education organizations to create such a system.
Amherst College, also a member of the Annapolis Group, has not joined other colleges in deciding to stop participating in the rankings system. According to the New York Times, President Anthony Marx said that he was not ready to cut off ties with U.S. News and would prefer to continue to discuss the issue.
Several of the College's students seem to agree with the sentiments behind Marx's statement, at once recognizing both the limitations of the U.S. News report and the opportunities it provides.
"I do not think it is really possible to reduce the opportunities a college can offer to a simple numeric value, but as such lists exist, I guess Amherst should probably be on them," said Azlan Smith '10. "Perhaps it is just a matter of pride. On the other hand, I know that many of my peers (here and at other colleges) used them as a first, general resource when applying to schools."
Ricardo Bilton '10 agreed, but recognized that the rankings have a significant potential to detrimentally affect the institutions it covers. "I doubt if any intelligent person bases their college decisions solely on the U.S. News rankings," he said. "For me, they were helpful in allowing me to see what schools were out there. Naturally, however, I was determined to apply to the top schools on that list-Amherst and Williams. I think this may be the problem. Because people tend to want the best for themselves, they are inclined to ignore the schools below a certain point in the rankings. This obviously causes them to ignore a large amount of schools just because of the rankings. Still, the rankings are extremely helpful for smaller schools like Amherst and Swarthmore that are not as well-known as schools like Harvard and Yale."
The College also placed second behind Williams in other rankings. The National Collegiate Scouting Association (NCSA), an organization that provides information to high school students interested in intercollegiate athletic competition, announced its "Power Rankings" for 2007. The ranking orders colleges based on their Sports Academy Directors' Cup ranking, their U.S. News ranking and their National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) student-athlete graduation rate. For two years in a row, Williams has placed first, followed by Amherst in second and Duke University in third, among all colleges and universities across all NCAA divisions.