The Influence of the U.S. News and World Report Collegiate Rankings on the Matriculation Decision of High-Ability Students : 1995-2003

The annual U.S. News and World Report Guide to America's Best Colleges is a much anticipated magazine among both high-ability prospective students and college and university administrators. In this paper we use a decade of Colgate University Admitted Student Questionnaire surveys to estimate the influence of changes in a school's USNWR rank on the probability of matriculation of high-ability students. We find that the school choice of students is more responsive to changes in rank the higher (better) a school is ranked. This result generally holds for aided and full pay students; however, the exception is that changes in rank among the top 5 schools do not influence the school choice of full-pay applicants. Women are slightly less sensitive to the rankings than men, and in the aided sample minorities are also slightly less responsive to rank changes. In terms of financial factors, those in the lowest half of the family income distribution are found to be the most sensitive to net cost. Finally, merit aid does not appear to influence full-pay students in their decision and we don't find evidence that the rankings themselves have become more or less important in school choice over the past decade. Our results suggest that it is rational for college administrators (especially those at the highest ranked institutions) to pay attention to their USNWR rank because it is an important influence in yielding accepted students