Georgetown University fell one place, from 23 to 24, in U.S. World News and Report’s 2003 College Rankings, marking the first drop in four years. A host of criteria, including freshman retention rate, academic and faculty resources and reputation are considered to determine the annual rankings.

“It’s important not to place too much emphasis on these or any other rankings,” Julie Green Bataille, assistant vice president for communications, said. “Efforts to rank universities fail to recognize the great diversity of the characteristics of colleges and universities in the country and the qualities that individual students may find most important.”

Georgetown students like Chris Bobbitt (MSB ’05) refuse to take the rankings at face value and feel that the current rankings betray our true status as a center of academic excellence.

“They use criteria that doesn’t necessarily reflect the quality of education or the national prestige of a school,” he said. “Instead, they focus on things such as size of endowment and number of adjunct faculty.”

Despite the drop, Georgetown has consistently remained in the top 25 national universities for the past 15 years.

Georgetown also earned credit as having the eighth lowest acceptance rate at a rate of 21 percent. It also boasts 10th place for service learning and is tied at eighth place for quality of study abroad programs with Bentley College, Brown University and Providence College.

“Georgetown is pleased to maintain strong overall rankings in a number of categories but it is really the students’ perspective that counts,” Green Bataille said.

Student opinion remains strongly in favor of Georgetown deserving a better reputation.

“I think Georgetown definitely deserves to be ranked a lot higher,” Faith Jones (SFS ’05) said. “It’s a beautiful campus, it has intellectual students and great programs and professors. I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t think it was the best.”

The university also ranked 49th for best value, which measures academic quality in relation to tuition, and tied for the No. 25 slot for best undergraduate business program with five other universities.

Despite the rankings drop, students like Bryan Steil (MSB ’03) are keeping things in perspective.

“Hey, at least we’re doing better than our football team,” he said.