The Beginning of the End for U.S. News Rankings?
In June of 2007, I wrote an article predicting (hoping) that Facebook would create a university ranking system that would rival U.S. News & World Report. On Friday, I received the following e-mail from my director of strategic branding:
Dear Rob Felton:
Coinciding with the release of the 2009 edition of America’s Best Colleges at the end of August, U.S. News will launch a Facebook application that will be an all-inclusive resource for information on colleges, rankings, and the school selection process for users and their friends.
Using data that has already been collected on our annual surveys, our application will allow Facebook friends to share information about the schools they are considering attending. By saving schools to their list, students will be able to compare their interests with friends, meet other applicants, and discuss their impressions of a school.
Students on Facebook will soon be perusing your institution’s data — which is why we need your help. If you have a thumbnail image of your institution’s logo or another image that best
represents your institution, please send it to us to use in our Facebook application (file specifications are listed below). The data that will be included has already been collected as part of our America’s Best Colleges project. We do not need any additional data from you.Please send your image as an attachment to social-networking@usnews.com.
If you do not have an appropriate image, your institution will still be included in our application, just without an image.
Technical Specifications:
Accepted file formats: JPG, GIF, PNG
Images will be sized to fit within the following dimensions: 100 pixels wide and 75 pixels tall
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me by email at social-networking@usnews.com or by phone at (202) 955-2242.
Sincerely,
Vachelle Manly
Data Collection Manager
U.S. News & World Report
I think this is the beginning of the end of U.S. News’ reign as the ranking system for universities. As U.S. News enters the world of Facebook applications, we’ll see innovative developers create new and more accurate ways of ranking schools using social networking data and the Common Data Set, which schools can upload to Facebook for multiple developers instead of just submitting it to U.S. News.
It may end it for students but not likely for helicopter parents, who are just as influential (if not moreso) in the decision making process.
True. Time will tell how long it will take to topple USNWR, but the end is coming.
Since college-bound kids are looking for their “space” I would suspect that there will be a new “hang-out” in the offing. Facebookers are, I think feeling the adults looking over their shoulders. When their open dialog is threatened they will find a new place to talk.
I’m not sure it’s a good idea to invade their dialogue. Peer to peer with college age kids is a sacred place. Remember..?
Paul O’Mara