The Google College Rankings

Well, for the first week of 2009 at least.

What can Google tell us about the ranks of the top ten universities in the United States at the beginning of 2009? These are the rankings it offers to us as the new year opens:

1. University of Virginia
2. Harvard University
3. Stanford University
4. University of Michigan
5. University of Georgia
6. University of Washington
7. Duke University
8. University of Florida
9. Yale University
10. Princeton University

Not surprisingly there’s a good deal of overlap with our first attempt at national university ranking, posted last month. The anomalous University of Tennessee at Knoxville—number two last month—is gone. U.S. News places it at 108, and this week Google does not include it in the top 50, so the explanation of its temporarily high position is unclear. Will it return again? Time will tell. But this demonstrates one of the points that we at the Google College Rankings always wish to emphasize: parents and prospective students should study college and university rankings, but they shouldn’t take them too seriously.

In choosing a university from the above top-ten list, for example, there are factors to consider that would far outweigh numerical rank for almost every student. The massive and northern University of Michigan is a sharply different institution from the smaller and very southern Duke University. A student who would flourish at one might well be unhappy at the other. The sunny California culture of Stanford is very different from the crisp New England culture of Harvard. And yet in terms of academic quality, both are outstanding.

Rankings such as these, or the rankings published by any other agency, are a good place to begin your college search. But they should never be the place where your search ends.