Harvard, Princeton again share top spot on U.S. News rankings

For the third straight year, Harvard and Princeton share the top spot in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of America's best colleges.

In fact, the full rankings look much like last year, with not one school in the top 20 moving more than two spots in either direction. Rounding out the top five are Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and Duke and Stanford, who tied. The top four liberal arts colleges also are unchanged, with Williams again No. 1.

The University of California, Berkeley, tied for No. 20, is the top-ranked public university in the latest guide to "America's Best Colleges," hitting newsstands Monday.

The formula for the controversial rankings includes variables such as graduation and retention rates, faculty and financial resources, and the percentage of alumni donating money to their alma mater.

After years of criticism for tinkering with its formula, the magazine has more or less settled on an equation over the last decade, and hasn't changed it at all since dropping admissions yield -- the number of accepted students who attend a school -- as a criterion. Because college profiles change only gradually, the result is the rankings have barely budged.

"So much for the theory that every year U.S. News is determined to seek publicity by blowing up the old formula and putting in something all new," said Ben Wildavsky, the college guide's editor.

But some critics say the formula should be changed, arguing it fails to account for many aspects of educational quality. More administrators appear to be protesting the rankings by declining to participate in the magazine's peer review, in which they are asked to grade other colleges; that portion of the formula accounts for 25 percent of a school's ranking.

"No one can know for sure what is going on at another institution," said Marty O'Connell, dean of admission at McDaniel College in Maryland, who refuses to grade other schools. "The colleges with the largest endowments always end up being the ones with the highest peer ratings."

Robert Morse, the magazine's director of data research, acknowledges that the response rate has slipped but "there's still a credible number of respondents per school. We're not in any danger of having a school rated by just five people."

New this year are rankings of "economic diversity" among the top colleges in the national universities and liberal arts school categories. The lists are a measure of the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants, the federal government's primary college aid for lower-income people. UCLA is tops (38 percent) among national universities, while Smith is highest among top-ranked liberal arts colleges (27 percent). Wildavsky said the information could help students who want to identify colleges where they would meet people of varied backgrounds.

Princeton, which has at least tied for No. 1 for six straight years, issued a statement saying "it is gratifying that Princeton continues to be recognized for the quality of the undergraduate experience we offer" but that rankings cannot reflect whether any college is the right match for a student. Harvard spokesman Bob Mitchell said: "We're just pleased we're able to put together the best possible education for our students."