College Factual, a site designed to match students with their best collegiate fit, released its 2017 “Best College” ranking list on Wednesday evening.
TCU, overall, ranked in the top 200 out of over 1,300 universities, with particularly high rankings earned in the Neeley School of Business, the Bob Schieffer College of Communication and the College of Fine Arts.
While rankings may contribute to some individuals’ opinions on universities, Chancellor Victor Boschini said these types of lists are only one factor in measuring a university’s successes.
“I don’t think any of us can afford to dismiss any of the rankings, but I also don’t live and die by the rankings,” Boschini said. “We have to do what’s right for our students, and the rankings will follow.”
Heath Einstein, the director of freshman admission, agreed, saying that rankings are not as important to the collegiate process as they may appear to be.
“It’s a rather tall task to quantify a process that’s largely built on emotion,” Einstein said.
Einstein said it’s difficult to find a single methodology that accurately ranks colleges in a way that effectively appeals to all students.
“For any one student, what’s important to one is not important to another,” Einstein said.
For some, the problem with rankings lies with the strategies of those compiling the data, said Ray Pfeiffer, the associate dean for undergraduate programs in the Neeley School of Business.
“I’m highly skeptical of a lot of the rankings because I think there’s a lot of money to be made in being a ranking company,” Pfeiffer said. “There are very few with any real, reliable methodology that leads to numbers that are actually useful.”
College Factual, according to its website, uses a methodology that includes ranking all schools on which it has data, using data centered on graduates’ outcomes and refraining from dividing schools into separate lists.
Regardless of the methodology or the type of ranking, prospective and current students are encouraged to do their research when considering where to apply.
