Are college rankings an important consideration when deciding on studying abroad?

When contemplating on studying overseas, the first choice prospective students need to make is ‘where to study’? Though critics declare rankings to often be subjective and misleading to international students, yet keeping aside all other admissions-related issues and aspects, ranking tends to be of paramount importance to most applicants when they plan to study abroad. Ranking educational institutions is also a business with an ever-increasing number of leading dailies and publications coming up with their own forms of classification. In a majority of situations, these publications use very similar quality benchmarks for ranking; thereby ensuring results are very similar. However, one should first carefully examine these quality benchmarks/variables before proceeding to study the rankings.

Having said this, it is unfair to completely disregard these rankings as they do merit a closer look and are regarded highly by some eminent educationalists. Many institutions, including those that are well-ranked, question both the procedures as well as the information relayed by some of these rankings but still keep tabs on the results of these surveys and many-a-times use these results to their own advantage when it comes to marketing. When considering rankings it is essential to acknowledge that reputation does have an impact on the degrees granted. I would recommend analyzing the academic faculty and also if possible- actual visits to validate the assumptions that we derive from rankings, in order to ensure that the rankings reflect our interests.

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