Georgetown Ranked 23rd by U.S. News
By Heather Burke Hoya Staff Writer
Georgetown ranked 23rd among national universities in the 2000 U.S. News and World Report college guide. The university dropped three points from No. 20 last year.
This year marks the 13th consecutive year in which Georgetown has scored among the top 25 universities in the nation. The university ranked No. 21 in 1997 and No. 23 in 1996. For the first time, California Institute of Technology rose ahead of Harvard to seize the No. 1 ranking.
The annual rankings publication is one of the most-publicized and respected measurements of colleges and universities and is used as a resource by many high school students investigating colleges.
Recently, however, admission deans and others have criticized the methodology that U.S. News and World Report uses to compile the rankings. This year, the magazine weighed financial and research resources such as amount spent on instruction and expenditures per student more heavily than in years past. This change in methodology caused Cal Tech to move from fourth place last year ahead of Harvard, Yale and Princeton, all of which tied for first last year. Cal Tech spends $192,000 per student while Georgetown spends $46,500.
In terms of student selectivity, Georgetown ranked 14th this year. This ranking is determined by accepted students’ SAT scores, the percentage of students that graduated in the top 10 percent of their class, the proportion of accepted students who enroll at Georgetown and the acceptance rate. This year, Georgetown had the 10th-lowest acceptance rate at 24 percent, with 80 percent of incoming freshmen ranking in the top 10 percent of their high school class.
In addition, Georgetown ranked 13th in highest graduation rate. It tied with Cornell at 91 percent, the sixth highest graduation percentage overall of all schools.
Assistant Director for Public Affairs Amy DeMaria downplayed the importance of the rankings and how they are compiled. “You can manipulate these rankings however you want. It’s all how you score different factors,” she said.
DeMaria pointed out that Georgetown ranked in the top 10 in terms of lowest student acceptance and highest graduation rate. She called Georgetown’s 24 percent acceptance rate for the class of 2002, whose data U.S. News and World Report analyzed when compiling the rankings, “amazing.”
In addition, DeMaria pointed out that the acceptance rate for the incoming freshman class of 2003 was 23 percent. She also praised Georgetown’s 13th-highest graduation rate. “We have a lot of strengths,” she said.
“To be in the top 25 is great and all the schools are great schools. People should not be concerned or try to overanalyze why a school moved up or down a few notches,” DeMaria said. “Depending how you manipulate data all the schools submit, it’s very easy for schools to move up or down depending on a change in methodology or in the way [U.S. News and World Report] measures different factors.”
According to DeMaria, U.S. News and World Report gives a lot of weight to factors in which Georgetown does not score as high as comparable schools. For example, the university ranks 56th in terms of faculty resources.
“This doesn’t mean we have poor faculty resources, but it is lower than some comparable schools,” DeMaria said.
Faculty resources rank is computed by sub-factors such as faculty compensation (35 percent) and percentage of classes with fewer than 20 students (30 percent), student/faculty ratio and the percentage of full-time faculty. While 54 percent of Georgetown’s classes have fewer than 20 students, most of the schools in the top 10 have well-over 60 percent of their classes with fewer than twenty students. Georgetown has a 10-to-1 student/faculty ratio, lower than some of the schools ranked ahead of it. However, schools like Cal Tech and Yale have a 3-to-1 and 7-to-1 student/faculty ratio, respectively.
In addition, according to the U.S. News and World Report web page, the ranking formula gives greatest weight at 25 percent to academic reputation. Presidents, provosts and admission deans at schools in the same categories were asked to rate peer schools’ academic programs on a scale from one to five (the highest). Georgetown received a 3.9 on academic reputation score. Twenty-three of the other top 25 schools received an academic score over 4.0. DeMaria said she could not comment on this factor because she would be speculating on what other schools think.
Admissions Dean Charles Deacon could not be reached for comment Thursday because he was out of town.
One of the other reasons why Georgetown ranks lower than schools it competes with for applicants is because the university’s endowment has historically been lower than that of its competitors, according to DeMaria. As of June 30, Georgetown’s endowment totaled $719 million. “This is incredibly small compared to other schools,” DeMaria said.
Georgetown is a member of the Consortium of Financing Higher Education (COFHE), a group of 30 select private schools, including the Ivy League universities, that share academic and financial data. According to DeMaria, among all the COFHE schools, the average endowment per student was $221,000 while at Georgetown, the endowment per student was $46,000, less than 25 percent of competitor schools.
However, DeMaria said the Third Century Campaign, a six-year fundraising effort to raise money to improve all aspects of Georgetown life, will strengthen Georgetown’s financial position, especially the school’s endowment. The campaign’s goal is to raise $750 million by 2001. So far, DeMaria said Georgetown has fundraised ahead of its goal, raising 60 percent of its goal, or $452 million.
“Historically the endowment has been low compared to competitors, but one of the main goals of the Third Century Campaign is to strengthen to endowment,” DeMaria said. “We are well on our way to meeting our goal.”
Ranked No. 29 by U.S. News in terms of alumni giving, Georgetown posted a 29 percent alumni giving rate in the rankings, which DeMaria said was compiled from the 1997-1998 academic year. In comparison, Harvard posted a 46 percent alumni giving rate. DeMaria said that alumni giving rose to 33 percent for 1998-1999 and one of the Third Century Campaign’s goals is to raise alumni giving perpetually to 35 percent.
In an accompanying article entitled “How U.S. News Ranks Colleges,” available on the magazine’s web site, Amy E. Graham and Robert J. Morse wrote, “Our overall ranking system rests on two pillars. First, it relies on quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality. Second, the rankings are based on our impartial views of what matters in education; individual colleges tend to overemphasize their particular strengths as they compete to enroll the best students.”
Many of Georgetown’s graduate programs fared well in the U.S. News rankings as well. Georgetown Law Center ranked 14th among law schools this year, down two places from 12th place the last two years. In specific legal disciplines, it placed first in clinical training, second in tax law, fourth in international law, sixth in trial advocacy and seventh in dispute resolution and international law.
Among other graduate programs, the Georgetown MBA program scored 26th, tying with Ohio State, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and University of Maryland-College Park. Georgetown Medical School ranked No. 39 among medical schools, tying with Ohio State as well.