We should decide why we are above it all though, shouldn't we? Is it because all of the top-ranked colleges are essentially the same, or is it because the top-

We should decide why we are above it all though, shouldn't we? Is it because all of the top-ranked colleges are essentially the same, or is it because the top-ranked colleges are different in ways that are not captured by a single number. Furthermore, if we are going to distinguish between, prestige, selectivity, learning outcomes, jobs out of college, careers 10, 20, 30 years out of college, or whether we measure that by income, or influence, etc, before even moving on to distinguishing between the paths chosen by graduates of Yale, Juilliard, or CalTech, shouldn't we at least identify which is the one true metric, and why it is better than this magazine's? In dismissing rankings as but one take on the distinctions, I don't think prospective students are better served by the contention that the schools are largely interchangeable.