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9486 in the collection
The Atlantic Rates Colleges: Shame On Them
Ohanian Comment: Here's one more page in the Atlantic's atrocious book on education.
The ranking of top colleges has become a multimillion-dollar industry for magazine and book publishers, fueled by anxious parents looking for guidance and by the institutions themselves, which spend lavishly to raise their standings in such surveys.
But today marks the official entry of a new player. Introducing its "first annual college admissions survey," The Atlantic Monthly adds its weight to that buckling newsstand shelf with a 40-page package that includes its ranking of the 50 most selective colleges in the nation.
The Atlantic's findings may surprise and puzzle readers — for instance, U.S. News & World Report considers the University of Chicago No. 13 on its latest survey, while the Atlantic pegs it at No. 39 — and the effort is sure to set off fresh arguments about the value of college rankings.
The magazine's editors used what they acknowledged was a highly simplistic methodology in selecting its top 50 schools, and even they wonder about the list's value. But the survey, coming from a 146-year-old magazine that has published such bylines as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Gandhi, is already having an impact.
"Our dean will be out trying to raise $1 million in California," Ted O'Neill, the dean of admission at the University of Chicago, noted, "and he'll encounter people who — however well-educated they are — will see this as an insult, and will wonder what's gone wrong at Chicago."
At a conference in Long Beach, Calif., last week, college admissions officials who were shown advance copies of the survey bemoaned yet another list on the market. They said that whatever the magazine's disclaimers about its rankings, abundant in the essays in the Atlantic package, the new chart was what would surely grab people's attention.
"People don't buy Playboy to read the articles," said Elise A. Seraydarian, the director of college guidance at the Friends School, a private high school in Baltimore.
John Fox Sullivan, the president of The Atlantic Monthly, is not offended by that comparison.
"Atlantic readers are people too, and they have the same natural instincts," Mr. Sullivan said. "They like lists. And we're appealing to them with a list."
Mr. Sullivan said that the magazine, which has been losing millions of dollars annually, printed 20,000 extra copies of its November issue, for a total of about 150,000. It hopes that the list, as well as the articles, will draw more teenage readers, as well as their parents.
"As we try to build circulation and readership," Mr. Sullivan said, "those are two very important categories for us."
Mr. Sullivan emphasized that "this is not an effort to compete head to head with U.S. News" and that while The Atlantic hopes to publish a second college issue next year its next list will probably seek to measure an entirely different aspect of the admissions process.
But the comparisons with U.S. News are hard to ignore: James Fallows, the national correspondent of The Atlantic and the editor of the admissions package, was the editor of U.S. News from 1996 to 1998. And graphically, at least, the two publications' lists are nearly indistinguishable, save for each magazine's branding at the top.
But as The Atlantic seeks to rip a page from the U.S. News playbook, U.S. News is this week seeking to compete in a new arena.
Through the publisher Sourcebooks, U.S. News has just released its first "Ultimate College Directory," a 1,908-page guidebook that weighs 6 pounds, 6 ounces, nearly twice the weight of a rival, "The Fiske Guide to Colleges," which is also published by Sourcebooks.
"Specifically, as regards the list, God bless them," said Brian Kelly, the executive editor of U.S. News. "It's always good to have another intelligent voice in the debate. But that said, I'd like to see more new thinking here."
"Their list," he added, "is sort of pointless to me."
The U.S. News list has become so popular with parents and students, becoming one of the most successful issues, that several dozen colleges each spend tens of thousands of dollars on marketing intended at least partly to outwit it.
Since U.S. News measures selectivity, for example, some colleges have blanketed the homes of high school sophomores and juniors with pleas to apply, knowing full well that many of those applicants will be rejected but that the college's ranking may well rise as a result.
Those who read The Atlantic package closely will find that the magazine actually has a more complex agenda.
While devoting a full, easy-to-tear-out page to its rankings — which are based on an institution's rejection rate, as well as the median SAT scores and class rank of its applicants — the magazine seeks simultaneously to undermine confidence in such numbers, whether they be The Atlantic's or U.S. News's.
With articles bearing such headlines as "The Selectivity Illusion" and "Calm down!" the magazine's editors and writers argue that "a school's selectivity does not necessarily reflect the quality of the education it offers."
Mr. Fallows, the author of the lead article, "The New College Chaos," writes that while a "more open market for college admissions" is fairer than the days when "Exeter's headmaster could earmark a few dozen of each year's seniors for admission to Harvard," other changes "undermine what had been fundamental ideals and values."
That is a message that many admissions officers and guidance counselors have tried to get out. The challenges that Mr. Fallows faces in broadcasting the same notion through his own megaphone were evident at the admissions conference in Long Beach.
When he held up the cover of The Atlantic, and described it as its first annual college issue, at a panel attended by several hundred admissions professionals, he was met by what he himself acknowledged to the crowd was "a collective moan."
"When you read this," he countered, "I think you'll see it's on the side of admissions you care about."
And yet, he fared better than Robert Morse of U.S. News. When Mr. Morse introduced himself at a panel the day before as "the one in charge of doing the rankings at U.S. News," he was greeted with hisses and boos.
Even officials at colleges that placed far better than the University of Chicago in The Atlantic analysis said they were disheartened that the magazine had chosen to produce a list.
James L. Bock, the dean of admissions at Swarthmore College, which is ranked No. 10 in The Atlantic and No. 3 on the U.S. News list for liberal arts colleges, acknowledged that such bouquets represent "free press for a small school" and "that we're not going to turn that away."
But however well-intentioned and thoughtful the articles, Mr. Bock argued, "my fear is that the list will just feed the frenzy."
Mr. Fallows of The Atlantic, who drew some attention two years ago with an article critical of early admissions programs, said that by lumping in liberal arts colleges, national universities and others on the same list — Bates is No. 46, for example, the United States Coast Guard Academy is ranked just below it — the magazine was obviously being "tongue in cheek." In contrast, U. S. News breaks rankings into several categories.
But Woody Johnston, a college counselor at the Severn School, a private school in Severn, Md., said he was not laughing.
For parents, when choosing among colleges, "there is no such thing as irony or tongue in cheek," Mr. Johnston said. "They take it literally."
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STATUS REPORT
Different Criteria, Different Rankings
The Atlantic Monthly ranks colleges based solely on how selective they are. U.S. News & World Report bases its rankings on a more complex formula and divides its list into several categories.
Atlantic Monthly
ALL
1. Mass. Institute of Technology
2. Princeton
3. Calif. Institute of Technology
4. Yale
5. Harvard
6. Stanford
7. Columbia
8. U. of Pennsylvania
9. Brown
10. Swarthmore
U.S. News & World Report*
UNIVERSITIES
1. Harvard
– Princeton
3. Yale
– Mass. Institute of Technology
5. Calif. Institute of Technology
– Duke
– Stanford
– U. of Pennsylvania
9. Dartmouth
10. Washington U. in St. Louis
LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES
1. Williams
2. Amherst
3. Swarthmore
4. Carleton
– Pomona
– Wellesley
7. Davidson
– Middlebury
9. Haverford
10. Bowdoin
* Dashes represent ties.
— Jacques Steinberg
A New College Ranking System, Wanted or Not
New York Times
2003-10-08
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/08/education/08ATLA.html?th
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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