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Among traditional college-bound high school students who consider college rankings, only about one in 10 say they care about an institution’s particular rank, according to a new survey from the Art & Science Group, a higher education consulting and research firm
Only about 60 percent of students surveyed used rankings at all. Of those, about a third said they turned to the rankings primarily to gather general information about the colleges and universities they are considering. The Art & Science Group surveyed 4,030 high school seniors, 1,579 of whom planned to attend a four-year institution full-time this fall.
Researchers from the firm said the “counterintuitive” findings are part of “ongoing exploration of the role rankings sources play for students” and “document a continued decline in the influence of U.S. News as a rankings source.”
“Let’s give the kids some credit!” the report reads. “Prospective students are by no means the passive consumers of any particular college rankings system, as is sometimes assumed. Rather, most are evidently seeing past the superficial horse race of rankings. A plurality aren’t considering these sources at all. And at least half of those who do are instead using them, among others, to gather information to help make informed decisions about which colleges might be best for them.”
