Status-watchers rest assured: for the fifth straight year, Princeton tops U.S. News and World Report's list of America's best colleges.
The annual rankings, released Thursday, have Princeton and Harvard University sharing the number one spot out of 248 national universities. Yale rounds out the top three.
"I have always believed that the U.S. News rankings are of very limited value," Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel said in an email responding to a reporter's query.
"On the other hand, if they insist on ranking universities and colleges, it is certainly gratifying to see Princeton ranked at the top, a ranking that matches, I think, the quality of the undergraduate educational experience we provide."
An announcement of the top-spot ranking was quickly added to the Princeton homepage.
The magazine also reported that Princeton has the highest alumni giving rating at 61 percent. Princeton earned the second highest selectivity score, based on standardized tests, high school class rankings and acceptance rates.
In other listings, Princeton was named second in the list of best values after the California Institute of Technology, and Princeton students were said to have the least debt at $6,500.
The magazine's release renewed debate over whether the rankings have value.
Wednesday evening, 15 liberal arts college presidents issued a statement calling the usefulness of the rankings into question.
Several of the colleges, including St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., and Santa Fe, N.M., and Reed College in Portland, Ore., refused to take part in the survey.
"Rankings perpetuate a false impression that a good education can be numerically quantified," said St. John's College President Christopher Nelson. "A college's distinctiveness is lost in this system."
Richard Folkers, media relations director at U.S. News, brushed aside the criticisms, saying in an email they are "nothing new."
"As the oldest and biggest college guide — ranking every accredited four-year school in the country — those kinds of shots come with the territory. And we try to react like grownups," he said. "Schools would rather we not rank, but only provide information. Yet schools rank prospective students by numbers, too."
Folkers did concede, however, that prospective applicants should look beyond the rankings.
"We fervently believe a ranking should be a tool, but it shouldn't be the only tool," he said.
Another concern of those opposing the rankings is that they "create powerful incentives to distort institutional behavior, manipulate data and diminish valuable differences among institutions," in the words of Reed Presdent Colin Diver.
But Malkiel said Princeton does not make any decisions based on the list.
"We do not tailor what we do to those rankings — not in any respect," she said.
Students acknowledged the list's influence but expressed concern over how it is interpreted.
Daniel Wickner '07 argued that applicants shouldn't make decisions based on small differences between scores.
"It's difficult to rank schools in such a precise order," he said. "Each of the top 25 colleges could be considered top five because they are all so good."
Seth Blumberg '08 said the list is "divisive" and "fosters a sense of elitism."
"The truth is that a student's college experience depends less on where he goes, and much more on what he does there," he said.
The overall rankings changed little from last year, when Princeton and Harvard were also tied for number one.
However, the magazine eliminated the second tier of rankings this year, combining the top half of colleges into one list and sorting the bottom half alphabetically in two tiers.
This year's list was based on data from the class of 2007, but the class of 2008's figures might change things next year.
The admission rate for the class of 2008 increase two percentage points to 11.9 percent.
U.S. News declined to comment on how the higher rate, however, wound translate in next year's rankings.
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