George Washington University was listed as the 51st-best university in the United States when U.S. News and World Report’s annual guide to the nation’s top colleges went to print. But last week, the university confessed that it overstated a critical metric in U.S. News’ methodology.
When it originally submitted data on the freshman class that matriculated in fall 2011, GWU inflated the number of students who finished in the top tenth of their high-school classes by 20 percent. As a result, the guide released in September placed GWU at 51st, tied with Boston University and Tulane University. U.S. News’ formula values the high-school performances of incoming freshmen as six percent of the overall score.
As a result of the reporting error, U.S. News removed GWU from the numerical rankings of National Universities in the online version of the guide and relegated it to its category of unranked schools, where it will stand until the 2014 edition of the guide is released next September. Furthermore, as a result of the discrepancy among members of the class of 2015 who finished in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes, GWU also had to revise how many of its students finished in the top 25 and 50 percent, as well as the number of students who submitted high-school class rank.
U.S. News annual survey of colleges and universities is often intellectually maligned, but admissions officers and school publicists love them. In an interview with The Atlantic last year, former GWU President Stephen Trachtenberg said U.S. News’ guidebook has some value, but it and other attempts to rank academic institutions should be treated warily:
The National Rifle Association likes to say, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” College rankings aren’t dangerous or misguided so long as they are used prudently, safely and appropriately. They shed some light: they are interesting, entertaining, useful sources of gossip, and helpful for puffing but they shouldn’t inform the decision about where a student decides to matriculate, at least not definitively. They add some marginal benefit however university students are expected to be thoughtful consumers.
In a statement on GWU’s website posted last Thursday, GWU President Steven Knapp wrote that the revision to its U.S. News ranking was due to a legitimate accounting error, but the school did hire an auditor to examine its admissions data.
“I deeply regret this error and want to assure you that corrective action has been taken and safeguards put into place to prevent such errors from occurring in the future,” Knapp wrote.
