Dartmouth ranked 9th nationally

By Hank Nelson, The Dartmouth Staff

Published on Tuesday, August 17, 2010

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Dartmouth placed ninth in the 2011 U.S. News and World Report annual “Best University” ranking, improving from its 11th-place ranking of the past three years, the U.S. News and World Report announced Monday night. Although Harvard University, Princeton University and Yale University nabbed the top three slots, Dartmouth’s improved ranking this year is likely due to a number of aspects of the College that have improved recently, including increased donations from alumni and smaller class sizes, Provost Carol Folt said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

The College shares its ranking with Duke University and the University of Chicago.

Dartmouth also ranked first in the nation for best undergraduate teaching for the second year in a row.

“I think these rankings are highly variable from year to year so a slight change in one category can really make a difference when you have such excellent universities all vying for the top level,” Folt said.

The College has improved in a “number of areas,” according to Folt, including increased alumni giving, greater faculty resources and decreased class sizes.

“It’s really the sum of all those small increments that changed our rankings,” Folt said.

The higher ranking does not reflect any recent administration changes as much as it reflects policies that Dartmouth has been pursuing for years, according to Folt.

“It’s the second year in a row we were ranked first in undergraduate education, so that’s something that spans two presidents,” she said. “Most of these things are a continuation and a strengthening of our role as a leading institution with a strong commitment to undergraduate education.”

The College’s ranking for “alumni giving” improved from third to second place, and categories like small class size, graduation and retention rate, student selectivity and faculty resources also improved, according to the press release. Dartmouth has continued to receive high rankings in its study abroad programs, placing first amongst the Ivy League schools for “most students studying abroad.”

Off-campus programs are important to students’ learning experiences, according to Folt.

“One of the really important ways you could ensure student success was to have strong opportunities for overseas learning, and Dartmouth was just considered an exemplar of a place that did that,” she said.

The economic downturn and its repercussions on higher education are factors that may have been considered for this year’s rankings, according to Folt.

“[University administrators who participated in the ranking] are all acutely aware of the financial problems faced by schools in this country,” she said. “I think they look at the way Dartmouth has handled it and that, in spite of those economic situations, we’re continuing to put our priorities into our programs, our educational programs and our recruitment and retention of faculty and people who are really dedicated to that undergraduate education.”

Folt said the rankings were not a reflection of the financial situation of individual schools, but rather the “big picture” of the way universities are functioning during an economic downturn. Dartmouth also ranked in the top 10 universities with the highest economic diversity, with 13 percent of Dartmouth students receiving government-issued Pell grants. This ranking represents a long-standing Dartmouth policy to make college affordable for students, Folt said.

Although Dartmouth’s need-blind policy was not affected by the budget cuts, administrators terminated the no-loan policy for students whose annual family incomes total more than $75,000, The Dartmouth previously reported.

The U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges ranking system utilizes input from university administration officials to rank their peer institutions, according to Folt.

Dartmouth was placed in the category of “national universities,” which consists of universities that offer a “full range of undergraduate majors as well as master’s and doctoral degrees,” according to the U.S. News and World Report website.

Due to increasing numbers of applicants every year, Folt does not believe that the higher ranking will have a large impact on applications in 2011.

“I think that the U.S .News and World Report rankings are one of many things, I certainly hope, that students take into account when they identify the place they want to apply,” she said. “This is a small change. This is movement among outstanding institutions and so I don’t know that it will have affect on the perception of Dartmouth. We are already perceived as one of the leading schools in the country.”

Dartmouth’s high ranking in U.S. News and World Report contrasts with the College’s recent placement in Forbes Magazine. Though the College improved to 30th in Forbes’s annual list of “America’s Best Colleges,” in 2009 Dartmouth was placed at 98th.

According to Folt, the discrepancy is due to Forbes’ system for ranking colleges, which Folt said do not apply to Dartmouth. Forbes uses websites such as Ratemyprofessor.com to rank faculty at universities, but Dartmouth students do not often use the site, according to Folt. When she and other administrators investigated the site, they found that a number of professors listed on the website do not teach at the College, she said. The widespread use of campus-based course evaluations makes sites like Ratemyprofessor.com less popular at Dartmouth, according to Folt.

“Using that metric that really has no quality control and can’t even be checked at all for veracity is something that is going to make that whole ranking system quite volatile for a school like Dartmouth and other schools that have a strong school-wide ranking of course evaluation,” she said.

Staff writer Ann Baum contributed to the reporting of this article.