Olaniyan to UCLA. Can you say "Chuck Bullough?"

I think you made quite a statement right there. They are no more credible than USNWR rankings. Who's to say that USNWR is fair and even in their rankings. There have been some knocks against them for the way they rank colleges as being questionable in the past few years. I'm not going to provide links because 1) I don't have any off hand and 2)I have to get to the hospital and don't have time. But I do recall a few discussions (most likely on here) that have questioned them.

Agree that it's mostly a fool's errand. To me, program-based rankings make more sense that school-wide rankings, because they tend to be more apples-to-apples and focused on scholarship and intellectual capital. Professional program rankings (like Businessweek and WSJ rankings of MBA programs) take those items and add output metrics, like employer satisfaction with those they hire from each school. USNWR is known for input-based metrics, like avg SAT, incoming GPA and yield, which always puts smaller, choosier schools in front of more inclusive, larger public schools like Berkeley, UCLA, UVA and UM, with little regard for the academic quality of the school or its intellectual capital. Not to say Wash U in St Louis isn't a good school, but USNWR is about the only place you'll see it ranked higher than Berkeley. USNWR is pretty widely regarded by academics as a list of the choosiest schools that get the students with the best HS academic credentials, rather than the schools that provide the best education, get published more often, and advance human knowledge. Thus, in my eyes at least, it's pretty damn hacky.

Are they really contradictory statements? I said the poster should have known what he was talking about, not that I found the concept of academic ratings and prestige at all valid.