Site Pokes Fun at Rankings

Almost every college-bound student has heard it at some point in the stressful search for colleges: “Oh, Harvard, Princeton, Yale…they’re the top three.” But check www.rankyourcollege.com and you might find that even Harvard ranks at a lowly five. Hit the refresh button your browser though, and Harvard might have rocketed to the top again.

How could this have happened?

According to Stuart Rojstaczer, a geology professor at Duke University, and inventor of the Rank Your College website, college rankings are just a scam—and rankyourcollege.com is no more arbitrary than any other ranking.

“I wanted to poke fun at the shallowness and insecurity of higher education administrators and college applicants who view these ranking services as some sort of gospel,” he says.

Rojstaczer’s website was designed to parody top magazines like U.S. News and World Reports that draw in millions of readers each year who want to see which college is number one.

He claims, however, that such lists are about money, not quality. While he refuses to discuss the exact methodology of rankyourcollege.com, he hints that it randomly generates a list of schools weighted towards their per capita endowment—which he says might just be the same formula other rankings use.

“U.S. News then jiggles its formula every year to make the rankings change slightly,” Rojstaczer says.

Although the colleges’ order is very similar to those lists that lure in such faithful readers each year, Rojstaczer’s program was designed to switch the order slightly with every click of the “Refresh” button. This is where the humor lies.

And yet, despite the witty tone and obvious sarcasm of the website, Rojstaczer claims that some parents, students, and even guidance counselors still mistake this website for a serious ranking service.

For now, rankyourcollege.com stands as a comic warning to the hundreds of thousands of crazed college-bound high schoolers, and college administrations who value too highly “the fraud of media based rankers,” he says.

Harvard just might make it to the website’s number one spot again some day. But hey, if it’s not, just click again.

—Vicky L. Sprow contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Garrett M. Graff can be reached at ggraff@fas.harvard.edu.