Harvard leads pack once again

Princeton, Yale rank 2, 3 of national universities

For the past dozen years, fair Harvard had not fared particularly well in the US News & World Report rankings of the nation's best colleges, at least by its own exalted standards. It had been that long since the Ivy League powerhouse had held the top spot by itself. Finishing second the past two years, to Princeton of all places, was a particular affront. It was enough to make the blue bloods boil.

But today, order has been restored to its universe, with Harvard University again master of all it surveys. The Cambridge institution surpassed archrivals Princeton University and Yale University to reclaim the top spot in the undergraduate rankings, an annual rite of celebration and high-handed dismissal in education circles.

MIT, Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Duke University, and the University of Chicago rounded out the top 10 national universities. Amherst College, Williams College, Swarthmore College, and Wellesley College claimed the top four positions among liberal arts colleges, while the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Virginia, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Michigan were named the top four public universities.

Joking aside, university officials are deeply conflicted over the rankings, which enjoy a vast readership and influence over colleges' reputations. While colleges are quick to publicly criticize the rankings as arbitrary and fundamentally flawed, they often go to great lengths to improve their standing and to tout it when they do so.

Even before the rankings' official release, many colleges had already distributed press releases citing their strong performance.

"All of us in the Simmons community are delighted that, year after year, our excellence continues to be recognized by one of the nation's best-known college guidebooks," said Helen Drinan, president of Simmons College, which was ranked in the top tier of schools in its category of master's-level universities in the northern United States.

At Harvard, the reaction to the reclaimed rankings' supremacy was subdued.

"It's always nice to be recognized in this way," said spokesman Robert Mitchell. "However, our admissions officers always tell prospective students that they should select a college that best suits their needs, not by its position in a ranking."

The magazine bases its rankings on a range of factors, including peer assessments, graduation and retention rates, class sizes, selectivity, and students' SAT scores and high school grades.

Other New England colleges that ranked in the top 50 national universities were Dartmouth College (11), Brown University (16), Tufts University (28), Brandeis University (31), and Boston College (34). BC spokesman Jack Dunn said that the university made strong gains in the faculty-resources category, which considers the percentage of full-time faculty, the student-faculty ratio, and the proportion of faculty who hold the highest degree in their field.

A few schools did not participate in the survey, a sign of growing discontent with the rankings. But some officials said rankings are not worth getting upset over.

"We don't get exercised over it," said Colin Riley, a spokesman at Boston University, which ranked 60th. "Generally, students don't make decisions on where to enroll for four years on a ranking. It's all about the individual experience."