Uncool rankings: Princeton just #22 on list of the '50 coolest colleges'

Princeton has been lauded in recent college rankings for attributes such as its graduation rate, the percentage of alumni who give money and its focus on undergraduate education. Perhaps, however, the most important quality has invariably been overlooked: coolness. This omnipotent and yet somewhat unquantifiable characteristic has historically been viewed on the same level as famous alumni and school colors in its determination of a college's merit — that is, none — but the literary pillar Seventeen Magazine has begged to differ with its first ever rankings of the coolest colleges in the nation. The results have not been pretty.

In the teenybopper's October issue's ranking of the 50 coolest colleges, Princeton came in at a paltry twenty-second, far behind Rice (#1) and traditional Ivy League rivals Yale (#2), Penn (#6) and Columbia (#13), and even trailing also-rans such as Colorado College (#20), Sarah Lawrence (#21) and Harvard (#19).

In the world of mass media rankings of colleges and universities, there are seemingly a select number of elite publications, followed by a much larger grouping of semi-reputable and quasi-trustworthy periodicals and now a magazine dedicated to "creating notions of beauty and style," "proclaiming what's hot in music and movies" and "identifying social issues and popularizing the idols and icons of pop culture" bringing up the rear.

Publications such as U.S. News & World Report and the Princeton Review — which use dozens of criteria and complex formulas, and which both rank Princeton number one overall — reside on the forefront of this respectability frontier, while Seventeen has decided to do away with the formulas and focus on the colleges "where girls can get the best college experience," ranging from "frat parties to professors' involvement, from campus safety to great shopping." The magazine explains neither how these categories were calculated nor how each school fared in them, leaving the sheer mathematics and logistical credibility of the rankings in the dark.

But as far as Seventeen is concerned, Princeton just doesn't add up.

According to the magazine, having a safe campus is part of being "cool," which helps to explain why the New Haven-based Yale is ranked second among all schools. After all, in a 1995 survey of "America's Safest Places" by "Money Magazine," New Haven trailed only 181 other cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Dallas. In other words, Yale must have some pretty good shopping — so long as one does not venture off the campus or go anywhere at night.

Other components of the "cool" calculus behind the rankings are a social life and opportunities to meet members of the opposite sex, and yet the 65 percent male Cal Tech (#15) and the fraternity-crazed, all-female Mount Holyoke (#18) both come before Old Nassau.

So perhaps there is something inherently problematic in calculating "cool," something that cannot be categorized, quantified or analyzed, almost as if the rankings are more accurately pulled out of a hat.

But whatever the method to the madness behind the rankings, at least one publication has decided to fly in the face of conventional wisdom and not put Princeton atop its list.

Not so cool.