Beyond the Horse Race

I am frequently asked by applicants to provide rankings within clusters, with the implicit hope that the applicant's favorite program will rise to the top of a given cluster. Applicants often cite various forms of evidence to convince me that some shock has changed the market, some massive shift has taken place, or that such a shift is imminent that will place their school at the top. Since I am fascinated by this subject, I am very happy to entertain most of these conversations. The sad part, at least from my perspective, is that most of this time and energy would be better spent on the improving the underlying quality of the student's application rather than trying to make increasingly narrow distinctions based on such imprecise data. Perhaps more to the point, instead of worrying about whether school A has a slightly better general reputation than school B, it would make more sense for students to concentrate on the strength of each school in the specific geographic and commerical space that interests them.

Annual rankings are based on the horse race idea- if we already know the outcome in advance there will be little need to read the rankings. Thus, we need to see movement- who will gain this year? Who will lose? This plays to one of the great fears of achievers- that all of their efforts will be squandered by tying their fortunes to the wrong brand name. To be sure, the reputations of schools do change, especially when new entrants enter the market. However, this is usually a decades long process. Further, and this is a crucial point overlooked by many commentators, often new schools are added to a given cluster rather than existing schools being relegated to lower cluster.

One of the least productive parts of the rankings dialogue is the discussion of "buzz" regarding a school. Someone hears from someone that School A is suddenly "hot" and everyone is talking about it. Conversely, School B is in the "not" category and should be shunned- "Did you hear that School B is barely Top 20 anymore?"