The Wall Street Journal released their '07 rankings yesterday. Disappointingly, three of my four first-round targets lost ground on their '06 positions. Michigan tumbled from #1 to #7, Northwestern fell from #6 to #12, and Duke slipped one slot from #12 to #13. Happily, Dartmouth climbed back into the #1 spot it had lost the year before.
It sounds like the harshest criticism of Michigan and Kellogg focused on graduates' attitudes. While recruiters applauded both programs' grads in '06, their '07 report scorched students' "pompous, what's-in-it-for-me" attitudes. It sounds like we can also attribute Michigan's fall to its facilities - some recruiters rated it lower based on the inconveniences they suffered as a result of extensive construction.
While I certainly hope both programs act on this feedback in their admissions decisions, this news hasn't spooked me. As I've noted several times on this blog, rankings are tools to help shed light on particular aspects of a school, not definitive sources of truth. It's nice to know that I should carefully avoid sounding arrogant or selfish in my applications, but these numbers don't change my opinion of these schools. If anything they highlight the volatility inherent in asking recruiters for qualitative feedback from year to year. Interviewing one or two sour candidates, having a bad experience with a career services officer, or getting sawdust on their Johnson & Murphy's can obviously have a drastic effect on their impressions.
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