College rankings in national magazines came in at No. 12 in terms of importance for students. Having a good academic reputation was the No. 1 reason for choosing a college.

MSU Director of Admissions Jim Cotter said there are many factors in a student’s college choice.

“This is a very sophisticated clientele,” Cotter said. “These students have many resources available.”

Cotter said the amount of emphasis students put on rankings depends on their demographic.

For example, it’s unlikely a student from Michigan will look at rankings for in-state schools, but will be more likely to look at data for a school out of state. The rankings are especially important to international students, he said.

Cotter said determining the significance of rankings can be difficult because evaluators from outside of the university use the data to score to the institution.

“Rankings are very important to colleges and universities in terms of perception,” Cotter said.
“The ranking means more to the institution rather than the student population at times.”

The study comes after U.S. News and World Report was informed four schools misreported data for the report’s last college rankings, which might question the report’s credibility.

U.S. News and World Report still maintains the integrity of the ranking, stating on its website there is “no reason to believe that other schools have misreported data — and we therefore have no reason to believe that the misreporting is widespread.”

Communication junior Soo Kyung Kim was surprised to hear some schools misreported data because, as a South Korean international student, rankings were a large factor in why she chose MSU. She said she decided to come to the university because of its highly ranked College of Communication Arts and Sciences.

Kim said she trusted the rankings and surveys when she was picking a college because many of them were published in the Korean and Japanese press.

“Usually Koreans think of that as the standards of the university in the world,” Kim said.

International relations junior Kyle Johnson said he was not surprised to hear some schools misreported data because many universities put a lot of emphasis on the rankings.

“I could see how it would look skewed to make it look more advantageous to go there,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he did not look at rankings when deciding which school to attend. He wanted to go to MSU for in-state tuition and for the James Madison College.

“I think it’s what you put into it, rather than the school itself,” he said.

Cotter said the most important ranking to students is their personal ranking, which is why admissions encourages prospective students to visit campus.

“For students to fully understand the value of the rankings, I’ve always said to people (that the) student ought to focus on what they value most,” Cotter said. “What do they want to see on the campus?”