U.S. News places SLC among the miscellaneous

by Sarah Hopkins '10

Thursday November 29, 2007

The latest edition of the highly influential U.S. News & World Report college rankings, released in August, has placed Sarah Lawrence College in a group of strange bedfellows. These institutions include Baptist Bible College of Springfield, Mo.; the Evangelical Gustavus Adolphus College of Red Wing, Minn.; Pikeville College of Pikeville, Ky.; Sheldon Jackson College of Sitka, Alaska; and Excelsior College of Albany, N.Y., which claims to be “America’s First Virtual University.”

This year, for the first time, Sarah Lawrence has been cut from its usual place among the nation’s top 50 liberal arts colleges and grouped with 18 unranked institutions that U.S. News & World Report cannot classify because these schools did not supply sufficient data for the rankings process. The rankings criteria include average student SAT and ACT scores, which Sarah Lawrence, as a matter of policy, chose not to provide.

“Other than not fitting neatly into U.S. News’ template, Sarah Lawrence has little in common with most of the other schools in that category,” said college officials in a press release issued in August.

Todd A. Wilson, the college’s communications director, said Sarah Lawrence officials were never preoccupied with their numerical ranking in the survey, but “it was always nice to be on that first page with the institutions who we primarily think of [as
our peers].”

This relegation of Sarah Lawrence to the ranks of the oddballs and outsiders – at least, according to U.S. News – has led to concerns that readers will categorize Sarah Lawrence with the other unranked schools. College officials are concerned that Sarah Lawrence’s exclusion from the rankings could deter some international students from enrolling, but they believe that the school’s academic reputation will remain unscathed.

In 2004, Sarah Lawrence decided to no longer collect or consider SAT scores in its admissions process. When the college refused to supply U.S. News with an average student SAT score for their August issue, the magazine’s officials threatened to, in the words of president emeritus Michele Myers, “make up a number.” That is, the magazine would assume that the average SAT score was one standard deviation (roughly 200 points) below the average of Sarah Lawrence’s peer institutions.

Robert Morse, the head of the U.S. News college rankings sector, acknowledged that he had made this threat, but claimed that the publication was also considering other procedures. Myers declared that Morse had never spoken of alternative approaches to the issue.

Last March, Myers wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that rebuked the college rankings system and defended the college’s decision to exclude SATs from the admissions process. “The best predictors of success at Sarah Lawrence are high school grades in rigorous college-prep courses, teachers’ recommendations, and extensive writing samples,” Myers wrote. “[SAT scores] added little to our ability to predict how a student would do at our college; it did, however, do much to bias admission in favor of those who could afford expensive coaching sessions.”

At a meeting in June, Sarah Lawrence decided to break all ties with U.S. News, declining to submit the data required to calculate rankings.

“It just made no sense to continue collaborating with them any further,” said Wilson. “It was in the great tradition of Sarah Lawrence to stand up for what we thought was right and to make a principled decision. We weren’t going to change our SAT reporting or use SAT admissions just so that [U.S. News] could feel like they were getting the right information they needed to rank. That’s like the tail wagging the dog.”

Sarah Lawrence’s most immediate concern about no longer being connected to U.S. News is the potential effect it may have on the school’s enrollment of international students. Said Wilson, “I think because international students don’t know American higher education generally, they may well rely on lists and groups more than [American] students.”

Aya Sato, a sophomore from Sydney, Australia, said that when researching American liberal arts colleges, she read U.S. News & World Report, but it “wasn’t really influential” in her decision to attend Sarah Lawrence. Rather, she learned about the college by speaking to alumni, meeting with former Dean of Admissions Thyra L. Briggs, doing online research, and reading the school’s official website.

Sarah Lawrence’s exclusion from the “Top 50 Liberal Arts Schools” ranking has roused anxiety about how the college’s academic reputation will be affected. Karen R. Lawrence, who became the college’s 10th president in August, has no such concerns. “Sarah Lawrence has a legacy of producing exceptional graduates, and based on applications and student performance since our SAT decision, student achievement continues to be excellent,” she said in an official college statement.

Wilson cited Reed College in Portland, Ore., as a peer institution that has a history of opposing college rankings. In 1995, Reed declined to participate in the U.S. News & World Report survey, making it the first educational institution in the United States to refuse to partake in college rankings. The school gained national attention, experienced a boost in application submissions, and, 12 years later, is hailed as one of the most coveted and prestigious liberal arts colleges in the U.S.

“I think particularly within the academic world, the reaction to [Myers’] stand was very favorable toward Sarah Lawrence,” Wilson said. “People recognized that we were making the principle stand and that U.S. News was basically setting itself up as an arbiter of American higher education. I guess everybody likes to be associated with something that has a sense of prestige, but I think Sarah Lawrence has that without U.S. News’ imprimatur as a ‘Top 50’ school.”