Two recently released publications rank Tufts among the nation's most prestigious universities, but university officials have downplayed the general significance of college rankings.
Tufts placed 28th on U.S. News & World Report's "Best Colleges 2011," a ranking of over 190 top national universities. Forbes' "America's Best Colleges," released in August, put Tufts in 34th place out of 610, five spots higher than the previous year's list.
Despite Tufts' strong showing in the rankings, however, university officials stressed the relative unimportance of such ratings, citing flaws in the methodologies used to arrive at the results.
Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler said that while the university frequently receives such accolades, its place in college rankings is not a huge consideration in the school's management.
"While we are proud when others recognize the quality of a Tufts education and the caliber of our students and faculty, high rankings are not our priority — quite the contrary," Thurler said in an e-mail to the Daily. "Tufts does not make decisions with rankings in mind."
Regardless of their influence on administrators, the popular university rankings lists can be a useful reference for high school students trying to narrow down their college search, according to Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Coffin."It's a utility to look at broad categories of institutions," Coffin said.
Coffin cautioned that although rankings can be a useful initial source for comparison in the college search, they are not meant to be an accurate portrayal of what an institution has to offer.
"They create a strong consumer instinct that gives students a false idea of what to look for, so we try to avoid conversations about rankings as part of our recruitment," Coffin said. "As an educator, I think they are silly as each ranking uses a completely different methodology. From year to year, [rankings] are a flat line. They don't change much."
Director of Advancement Communications and Donor Relations Christine Sanni (LA `89) similarly downplayed the effect of rankings on alumni giving.
"Though people might appreciate Tufts' stature and take pride in it, I'm not aware of anyone having made a gift specifically because of rankings," Sanni said. "Alumni, parents and other donors make donations because they have a connection to the people and programs at Tufts."
Both U.S. News and Forbes base a college's score and subsequent rank on many points of data, often including graduation rate, undergraduate academic reputation, financial resources and freshman retention.
U.S. News also factors in a peer assessment — a nationwide survey of university presidents, provosts and other administrators, including admissions deans. This rating can account for as much as 25 percent of a college's overall score, according to Coffin.
Coffin personally believes that this reliance on surveys is a flawed methodology.
"I stopped filling it out a couple years ago because I can't credibly comment on [the] quality of a university I am unfamiliar with — such as a school in the Midwest — or that I have never seen," Coffin said. "That's a very odd thing to me to be counting."
Thurler echoed Coffin's reservations about the methods that various publications and organizations use to rank colleges.
"Ranking methodologies are imperfect and may change from year to year," Thurler said. "Tufts' commitment to great students and great faculty will not."
This awareness of the ranking systems' imperfections have also led the university to avoid using the rankings to boost the image of the university in the eyes of potential applicants.
"We don't as a policy use the rankings to promote Tufts, on [the] theory that rankings are highly subjective," Coffin said. "Our goal is to increase engagement in every class, and that has nothing to do with rankings."
Some rankings systems take into account programs across the entire university, including graduate schools. Tom Keppeler, associate director of public relations at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, observes that the Cummings School, like the Tufts University School of Medicine, typically fares well in national rankings.
"The [School of Veterinary Medicine] consistently ranks among the top veterinary schools in terms of GRE scores of its applicants, research funding for faculty, caseload at its teaching hospitals and placement rates for internships and residencies," Keppeler said in an e-mail to the Daily. "These are the most important indicators of our success."
Coffin said that despite the rankings' flaws, their overall message is encouraging.
"Collectively, all of these surveys paint the same picture," Coffin said. "They put Tufts in a category of high-ranking, high-quality universities. And collectively, that says we're a place doing the right thing for students. That's what's important to me."
