A change in categories has meant that the
ranking for Calvin College in the annual
America's Best Colleges guidebook from
U.S. News & World Report looks very
different this year.
Last year Calvin was ranked first by U.S.
News & World Report in the category of "Midwest Comprehensive Bachelor's
Colleges." There were about 110 colleges
and universities in that category last year.
This year Calvin was moved to a national
category called "Liberal Arts colleges" and
was ranked 116th among the approximately
270 schools in the category.
Calvin officials note that the key areas
which U.S. News & World Report measures—
things like graduation rate, retention rate,
alumni giving, percentage of class taught by
full-time faculty, etc. — have not changed at
Calvin from last year to this year.
 "Calvin is the same school it was a year ago,
but simply in a different category this year,"
says director of admissions and financial
aid Dale Kuiper. "One of the biggest factors
in the change for Calvin from last year to
this probably was our peer reputation score.
In our old Midwest category we scored the
best of any school in peer assessment, a rating
that measures what presidents, provosts
and deans of admissions at Calvin's competitors
think of our academic programs."
Peer assessment accounts for 25 percent of
a school's overall ranking. "Switching categories,"
says Kuiper, "meant jumping into a
group where fewer of our new peers know
us the way our old peers did. That hurt our
ranking." Kuiper notes too that Calvin's
new category features a lot of schools with
really significant financial resources. "At
$80 million," he says, "our endowment is
tiny compared to some of our new national
competitors. We know we need to increase
our endowment and our financial resources
to sustain and maintain Calvin for the next
century. However, the schools in our new category have a huge head start on us
in that area. The top schools in our new
category have endowments over a billion
dollars!"
Kuiper says Calvin's different admissions
strategy also hurt the college in its new category. "The average acceptance rate of the
top 25 in our new category is 31 percent
compared to our 98 percent," he says. "We
admit a high percentage of those we
encourage to apply here at Calvin, while
most of our new competitors do not; they
reject about seven in 10 applicants. That
didn't hurt us as much in our old category;
it does in our new category."
Calvin officials continue to stress a message
they stressed even when the college was the
top-ranked school in the Midwest: the best
way to measure a prospective college is to
visit campuses, talk to current students,
check out college and university Web sites,
e-mail professors, sit in on a class and stay
overnight in a residence hall.
"The bottom line for Calvin," says Kuiper,"is we are a Christian college that provides
a first-rate academic experience, one we
believe is equal to any college in the country.
Our graduates are doing amazing work
of renewal in God's world. They are making
a difference. That's an affirmation of our
educational enterprise that goes far beyond
a ranking in a college guide."
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