GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- What's the best college or university in thenation? To some degree, it depends on whom you ask.

The eagerly anticipated, yet controversial, rankings of collegesand universities byU.S. News and World Report were releasedover the weekend. These rankings are based on a complex system thatgives points to each college, based on such factors as assessmentby presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions at peerinstitutions, the proportion of freshmen who return to the campusand eventually graduate, faculty resources, SAT/ACT scores ofenrolled students, spending per student on instruction, and thealumni giving rate. The reputational component of the system --which comprises 25% of the final score for a given college -- isbased, as noted, on ratings by college professionals, not thegeneral public.

TheU.S. News and World Report rankings are split intoseveral different categories, but the one to which the news mediapay most attention is the category "National Universities–Doctoral," which includes most larger universities.

The final results in this category in this year'sU.S.News rankings were as follows: Harvard, Princeton, Yale,Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute ofTechnology, Duke, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth,and Washington University in St. Louis.

The Public's View

Gallup deals in the public's opinion, and following in thistradition, from time to time Gallup measures what colleges thegeneral public considers to be the best in the nation. This year,respondents to a July Gallup Poll were given the opportunity toname two schools in answer to this question: "All in all, whatwould you say is the best college or university in the UnitedStates?" Respondents were asked to name two.

There is one clear winner in the court of public opinion,Harvard, which is mentioned by one out of four Americans as theirfirst or second response to this question, more than twice as many"mentions" as are given to any other college.

Based on the combined first and second mentions of the public,35 schools are mentioned by at least 1% of Americans as the best inthe nation, including all eight of the Ivy League schools (Brown,Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania,Princeton and Yale), and 18 state universities.

About a fourth of the respondents mentioned a college oruniversity other than those named below, which means that there area wide variety of colleges that are perceived to be the best byonly a very small percentage of the population. Additionally, ascan be seen, about one out of five Americans did not name anycollege or university.

To a significant degree, the schools that are at the top of thelist of schools named by Americans also appear at the top of thelist as compiled byU.S. News.

There are several interesting differences:

• Princeton, tied for first place in theU.S. Newsrankings (and in sole possession of its top ranking last year), isnot at the top of the list in terms of public perceptions.Princeton is mentioned by 4% of the general public as the topschool in the nation, tying it with U Cal Berkeley and Notre Damein the Gallup reputational rankings.

• The very highly rated California Institute of Technology,Dartmouth College, and Washington University in St. Louis, all inthe top 10 in theU.S. News ratings, are mentioned by lessthan 1% of the general population.

• Larger state universities such as Cal Berkeley, Michigan,Texas, Texas A & M, Ohio State, North Carolina, UCLA, and PennState all are mentioned by 2% or more of the general population,even though none appear in the top 10 in theU.S. Newsrankings.

There are significant regional differences in ratings of thecolleges or universities, as one might expect:

All in all, what would you say is the best college oruniversity in the United States? (open-ended responses)

Clearly, the prestige of Harvard (and to a lesser degree Yaleand Stanford) is fairly universal across regions of the country.But there are distinctions in the top five within each region:Princeton, MIT, Penn State and Penn do best in the East, Duke andTexas A & M in the South, Michigan and Notre Dame in theMidwest, and Berkeley and UCLA in the West.

What about post-graduates themselves, who might be expected toknow better than others what schools are prestigious, given thatthey applied to schools at least twice (for undergraduate andgraduate work) and most likely spent a good deal of time evaluatingschools? Here's the list of schools most often mentioned by collegegraduates with at least some post-graduate education:

The biggest difference here is the relatively higher rating forStanford, which almost ties Harvard among this group.

Survey Methods

The most recent results are based on telephone interviews with1,003 national adults, aged 18+, conducted July 18-20, 2003. Forresults based on the total sample of national adults, one can saywith 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±3percentage points.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practicaldifficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias intothe findings of public opinion polls.