"The magazine announced plans last week to make its rankings more
qualitative by collecting information from high-school guidance
counselors for the first time. But, U.S. News has yet to decide how the
additional input will factor into its ranking system.
Last year, Penn ranked fifth on the national colleges listing.
The
yearly surveys are often a source of much debate because it is
questionable whether the criteria used to measure the schools actually
speak to the overall quality of a college, David Hawkins, policy
director for the National Association for College Admission Counseling,
said.
To combat that image, the magazine decided this year to
send surveys to counselors at the 1,600 schools ranked in the
magazine's "America's Best High Schools" ranking.
U.S. News College Rankings Undergoing Revisions
Those heinous college rankings, responsible for so many agonizing decisions in our past, are changing for the better. Sort of. Penn's student paper explains how college counselors could provide more balance.