college rankings

recently, i heard that a certain professor stated that due to a recent change in the polling methods of US news and world report, the university of michigan's industrial and operations engineering (IOE) department will fall from its lofty ranking of #2. now normally, i would say that these rankings are for those who are so weak and insecure about their own abilities that they need to seek shelter and redemption in the ranking of their school, and thus, presumably themselves. unfortunately, i must admit to relying solely on those rankings for choosing graduate schools to apply to. if i chose my schools from a few of the top ones, how could i go wrong? i don't by any means regret my choice of staying here at michigan, since the 13 extra transfer credits i would get pretty much sealed the deal. but now i regret not looking at some of the other schools, like berkeley's ieor program, or mit's OR department. the more i look into US news and world report's rankings, the more appalled i am that i once placed so much of my trust in them. and it seems more and more parents are blindly pushing their kids to certain schools based on these rankings.

the fact of the matter is that these rankings are just a jumbled mishmash of whatever numbers those people can massage out of their collective behinds in order to keep things changing and the sales/readership increasing. a mere number is simply insufficient for classifing a university or graduate program. georgia tech has been #1 in industrial engineering for all of recent history. what kind of idiot would rather settle for #2, when he could have #1? to further illustrate my point (and give props to my fellow public school homies, kurt and kate) take a look at this letter from the president of stanford university here.

so let the ranking fall. i know what i'm worth. and it doesn't hurt to have the backing of the president of stanford either.