Brown University has the distinct misfortune of consistently receiving the worst ranking among Ivy League schools in the US News and World Reports rankings that are published annually. In the Best Colleges 2010 edition, Brown was ranked number sixteen overall in terms of the most highly regarded category of the national college rankings. For the 2010 rankings, Brown finished one spot behind fellow Ivy Leaguer Cornell University. Unfortunately for the good folks at Brown, being affiliated with a group as prestigious as the Ivy League means accepting the reality that when competing in an objective ranking system with such prestigious institutions, at least one member will have to come in last place.
Being one of the top twenty American universities (and in this specific case one of the top sixteen universities) is certainly no small feat. In fact, it can easily be argued that all top schools are outstanding institutions of higher learning that provide tremendous resources for the brightest students on the planet. Parents around the world would love to give their children the opportunity to attend the best universities in the United States.
Brown University, located in Providence, Rhode Island, has a storied history dating back to the days before the Revolutionary War, in a time before the United States of America existed. Founded in 1764 by Baptist, Brown University has been a proud member of Colonial Colleges (which recognizes America’s nine oldest institutions of higher learning) and the Ivy League, which formally adopted the Ivy title in 1954 to distinguish the athletic conference. in which academically focused members compete.
The eight schools that make up the Ivy League along with their 2010 US News and World Report rankings are:
- Harvard University (tied for number 1: 2010 US News and World Report rank),
- Princeton University (tied for number 1: 2010 US News and World Report rank),
- Yale University (number 3: 2010 US News and World Report rank),
- University of Pennsylvania (number 4: 2010 US News and World Report ranking),
- Columbia University (number 8: 2010 US News and World Report ranking),
- Dartmouth College (#11: 2010 US News and World Report ranking),
- Cornell University (number 15: 2010 US News and World Report ranking), and finally
- Brown University (#16: 2010 US News and World Report ranking).
As is evident from the co-number one places (this year Harvard and Princeton) there are ties in the rankings. Also of note is the fact that clearly the Ivy League schools do not simply make up the entire list from positions one to eight. Scattered throughout the top sixteen are well-respected non-Ivy League schools such as:
- Stanford (number 4: 2010 US News and World Report rank),
- Duke (number 10: 2010 US News and World Report rank),
- Washington University in St. Louis (number 12: 2010 US News and World Report ranking), and
- Johns Hopkins University (number 14: 2010 US News and World Report ranking), among others.
Over the past ten years, the US News and World Report rankings for Brown University have fluctuated while remaining in the teens for the past decade. Although Brown is enviably ranked by the vast majority of schools, the position at the back of the Ivy League pack has led some schools (such as Brown) to question the importance and validity of the rankings.
In terms of addressing concerns about the importance of these national rankings, the only statement that can be made with absolute certainty is that no one knows exactly what role these rankings play in terms of influencing which schools the best students choose to attend. In an ideal world, all students would have unlimited resources and the ability to become intimately familiar with each university’s curriculum and environment before making informed decisions about which environments best fit their personalities and meet their needs. The reality is that this utopia will simply never exist and for most prospective freshmen, the closest they will come to understanding what programs are available is through what they learn from publications like the annual U.S. News and World Rankings. reports. While schools that are less than satisfied with their current rankings are more than happy to argue that the rankings are irrelevant, the truth is that these schools are, at best, in denial of the influence these rankings have on highly educated teens. competitive students who have been raised in an environment that instills a mindset of constantly striving for the highest grades and best test scores.
Regardless of how parents, students, or admissions offices feel about college rankings, two points are clearly indisputable:
(1) the debate about the ability of these classifications to accurately measure subjective issues will continue for quite some time and
(2) these classifications are here to stay.