Princeton loses number one spot in U.S. News ranking

After eight consecutive years as the champion of U.S. World and News Report's famed "America's Top Colleges" ranking, Princeton dropped to second place in the 2009 lineup as Harvard rose to take sole possession of the top spot.

This is the first time in 12 years that Harvard was ranked as the sole number-one college by U.S. News. In the past, Princeton and Harvard have shared the top position, and Harvard dropped to number two in 2006.

This year, Yale remains number three. Stanford and MIT shared the fourth-place spot.

Both Princeton and Harvard eliminated their early admissions programs this year.

The rankings were made available on U.S. News' website Friday. Paper copies hit newsstands Monday.

The U.S. News ranking comes just a week after Forbes Magazine released its own inaugural college ranking system, which placed Princeton as number one, Caltech as number two and Harvard as number three.

Both ranking systems consider graduation rates. U.S. News' rankings also include criteria such as class size, average SAT scores and alumni giving rates. Forbes, on the other hand, takes into account factors like how many alumni are listed in the 2008 "Who's Who in America" register, results from ratemyprofessors.com and national award rates for students and faculty.

According to U.S. News, Princeton students graduated with the least debt out of all national universities surveyed.

The U.S. News rankings have been criticized for whether they’re able to truly assess educational quality and for their influence on students' perception of prestige over other qualities of colleges.

"While the University appreciates this recognition, formulaic rankings offer an inconsistent, and often inaccurate, picture of what individual colleges offer students," University officials said in an e-mailed statement. "It is important to note that no ranking can capture whether a school is the best choice for an individual student."

More than 100 colleges and universities have organized to form the Annapolis Group, whose members mutually agree to not provide U.S. News with information for its rankings. No Ivy League institutions are part of the Annapolis Group. Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel told The Daily Princetonian in a 2004 interview that she "[has] always believed that the U.S. News rankings are of very limited value."