I
n what Princetonians across the nation are calling “bullshit,” the university has fallen to second place in U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings. When asked to comment on letting such dishonor befall Princeton under her watch, president Tilghman was Clintonesque in her response. “Rankings? You say a magazine published a list of numbers next to a list of colleges? What’s the sense of that? Why, I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of U.S. News and… what were we talking about?” Yesterday the university announced its decision to join Harvard’s long-standing condemnation of petty rankings. A Princeton official dismissed the entire system as inconsistent and inaccurate. “Princeton has held the number one spot for the last eight years. And as Harvard has said all along, these rankings are not to be trusted, so being number one actually meant we couldn’t possibly have been the best. Now that we’re #2 in the rankings we’re more likely to be #1 in reality.”
– SL