In its annual survey of colleges and universities, U.S. News and World Report ranked the Johns Hopkins University as the 16th-best doctoral university in the nation. This puts the school one spot lower than in last year's rankings.
U.S. News editors and Hopkins admissions officers agreed that the change in the University's ranking this year meant very little.
"Movement between 15 and 16 really is an insignificant movement, and there really isn't much different between 15 and 16 from one year to next," said Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News.
Hopkins Director of Admissions Information Systems Sam McNair called the change "kind of unremarkable" and said that it was "not a big story."
He also said that there was no major difference between the number of applications received two years ago, when Hopkins was ranked No. 7, and the number of applications received last year.
McNair added that Hopkins gives U.S. News "virtually the same numbers" every year but that "a different editorial spin is placed on them."
Morse argued that the rankings are consistent - Hopkins has generally been ranked around No. 15, he said - and that the No. 7 rank two years ago reflected a greater emphasis on resources and research.
He called that year's rank "an aberration" and said that U.S. News reversed the change in methodology the next year.
McNair agreed that the No. 7 rank was "a fluke" resulting from "a dramatically changed methodology" that year.
Despite the change of two years ago, U.S. News defended the stability of their rankings system.
"There are movements every year, but there is an awful lot of stability," said U.S. News representative Rich Folkers.
He also suggested that it was misleading to focus on a single, overall number to measure the quality of a school, since U.S. News lists alongside the rankings data about freshman retention rate, SAT scores and graduation rate.
According to Folkers, applicants to colleges extract a lot more from the rankings than just where a school is ranked.
"Instead of fixating on a number, [students] read all the way across the line," he said.
McNair said that, because Hopkins is "dealing with the top 10 percent of students," people who apply "are informed of what they are getting into."
"We deal with a very sophisticated pool [of applicants]" who, McNair said, seem to understand much more about the rankings than those who apply to other schools in the country.
However, McNair said that there is a "general trend of the public placing too much emphasis on rankings."
His statement seemed to agree with the recent criticism the U.S. News rankings have received from Amy Graham, who used to oversee the college rankings.
Graham and co-author Nicholas Thompson said that the rankings provide misleading conclusions and are based upon unimportant factors.
Morse called the criticism ill-informed, saying that Graham and Thompson ask U.S. News to include factors, such as student learning, that cannot be measured.
In addition to Graham's open criticism, McNair said that the dramatic changes in methodology have been "eroding the public trust" in rankings.
- Staff writers Jeremiah Crim and Shannon Shin also contributed to this report.
