'U.S. News' ranks IU in second tier of colleges

Once again, U.S. News and World Report has given IU a mediocre ranking. \nRecently, IU has fallen within the second tier of schools when evaluated in areas such as SAT and ACT scores, freshmen retention numbers and alumni giving rate.\nThis year was no different.\nWhile IU ranked 26th among public universities, the Kelley School of Business's undergraduate program picked up some of the slack, garnering a 10th place overall ranking for business schools.\nMarc Dollinger, chairman of the undergraduate program at the school of business and a professor of business administration, said several of the factors for overall ranking work against IU, such as standardized test scores and selectivity rank. Part of this stems from the nature of Indiana's public universities, he said. Traditionally, they have tried to accept a large number of students to provide as many people as possible with higher education.\n"We get killed a little bit in the national rankings, but clearly we would not want to have it any other way," Dollinger said. \nHe compared IU to schools like the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Both schools are more selective, Dollinger said, but "I feel they don't really serve their states as well as we do."\nAlthough many students and parents use the rankings to compare potential schools, not everyone agrees on their merit.\n"As with all rankings, they have to be looked at critically," said Vic Viola, distinguished professor of chemistry. "Nonetheless, this is probably the most widely read of the rankings, and I think U.S. News makes an honest effort to select relevant criteria. What you really need to do is look at the individual criteria to see IU's strengths and weaknesses among those."\nBruce Cole, distinguished professor of fine arts, said there are other rankings he thinks hold more weight.\n"They are not as scientific as the new Florida Center Report, which also assigns IUB a low rating, but they do give a snapshot of how colleges and universities rank comparatively," Cole said. "And, they are far and away the most important rankings for prospective students and their parents, who rely on them to choose where they will apply."\nThe overall university rankings are determined by quantitative data, including areas such as student-to-faculty ratio, class size and predicted graduation rates, combined with a reputation score.\nJunior Justin McNall said that while he paid attention to rankings when he was choosing schools, some give them too much weight.\n"I don't think they're that important, and I think IU's kind of underrated," McNall said. "As far as the Midwest goes, you can get a pretty good job in the Midwest coming out of the IU business school."\nMcNall is an accounting major in the Kelley School of Business, which scored well in the ranking.\nThe accounting program ranked seventh overall, and ten other Kelley programs were in the top 10. Human resources and general management were the highest finishers, each coming in at fourth.\n"If you look at the ratings, you'll see schools like MIT and Carnegie-Melon get very high rankings in limited areas," Dollinger said. "We are highly rated in all the different areas."\nIndividual schools' rankings are determined from a questionnaire sent to schools. University representatives rank each school based mostly on reputation, Dollinger said. \n"We've been actively promoting the Kelley School of Business in the press," he said. "Many people in academia graduated from Indiana University, and they know it's a fine program. Because we're a big school, it gets the word around."\nWhile Dollinger admits the ranking system is not the best judge of a school, he said it provides students with a tool for comparison.\n "I think that the public wants to know which are the best schools, and there are lots of different ways to go about that, and one of those is reputation," he said. "In a perfect world, the customer would be able to get all the information they need without an intermediary. This is a kind of advertising, and it helps to sell magazines."\nMargaret Garrison, director of communications and marketing for the business school, said the school's tradition contributes to its high ranking. She said the schools pushes its students hard to continue this tradition.\n "The reputation is something that's been in existence for a long time," Garrison said. "The school has very high standards of excellence."\nWhen it comes down to it, Dollinger said, rankings are important but not everything.\n"I think they play strongly with parents because they want to know they're getting a good bang for their buck," he said. "When the students themselves are making the decision they look at more things than just the rankings"