College Rankings vs. Belonging: What Experts Say

Across admissions, education research and psychology, respected voices make a similar point: a college's ranking or selectivity says much less about how a student will do than whether the student engages, finds support and feels they belong. Here is what each of them says, with links to their own work.

The short answer

None of these experts say rankings are worthless. Most say they are a poor place to start. The research they draw on finds that what happens to a student in college (close professors, mentors, real projects, a community where they can be themselves) predicts learning, wellbeing and success better than the name on the diploma.

Jeffrey Selingo: change the question

Selingo, a longtime higher-education journalist and author of Who Gets In and Why and Dream School, asks families to stop asking "How can I get into this college?" and start asking how well a college fits the student. He suggests looking well beyond the top of any ranking, using federal tools such as College Scorecard and each college's net price calculator.

Denise Pope: engagement over selectivity

Pope, a senior lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success, co-authored a research review titled "A 'Fit' Over Rankings." It found that the students who do best, in college and after, are the ones who engage deeply in their college experience, whatever the school's selectivity.

Malcolm Gladwell: how the rankings are built, and the big fish

In his podcast Revisionist History, Gladwell devoted two episodes to how the U.S. News rankings are calculated. In his book David and Goliath, he describes the "big fish, little pond" effect: students judge themselves against the people around them, which can shape whether they stay in a demanding field.

Frank Bruni and Julie Lythcott-Haims: beyond the brand name

Bruni's book Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be argues that many kinds of colleges are good launching points. Lythcott-Haims, a former Stanford dean of freshmen, asks why families keep looking at the same small group of schools when thousands of colleges teach well.

Brené Brown: fitting in versus belonging

Brown's research distinguishes fitting in (changing yourself to be accepted) from belonging (being accepted as you are). She doesn't write about college choice directly, but her idea may be the clearest way to see what's at stake: a college chosen for its name can become a place a student has to fit into.

The research they draw on

Gallup-Purdue Index: a large study of college graduates found that experiences such as a professor who cared and a mentor mattered more than whether the college was public or private, selective or not.
Dale and Krueger: economists found that, for most students, attending a more selective college made little difference to later earnings, though it mattered more for students from low-income families.
Walton and Cohen: a brief exercise that helped first-year students see belonging worries as common and temporary raised grades over three years.

We cover these studies in Does college selectivity matter?

More voices worth knowing

Rick Clark and Brennan Barnard, The Truth About College Admission (book and podcast). Clark leads admission strategy at Georgia Tech; their first episode asks what rankings can and can't tell families. Listen
Michael Horn and Bob Moesta, Choosing College: start by understanding why a student is going to college before choosing where. About the book
Making Caring Common (Harvard), Turning the Tide: its 2026 report asks families and schools to help teens connect their values to their college choices. Read about it

What this means for your search

Start with the student, not the list. Notice how they learn, what they care about and where they feel most themselves. Then look for colleges where those things are at home, and use rankings, if at all, as one source among many later on.

FAQ

Do experts think college rankings are useless? No. Most treat them as limited: they measure things like resources and reputation, not whether a particular student will thrive. Selingo, for example, suggests using them as a starting point and then looking far beyond the top.

What predicts success in college better than rankings? Research reviewed by Denise Pope and the Gallup-Purdue Index points to engagement and experiences: close relationships with professors, mentors, real projects and a sense of belonging.

Does going to a highly selective college pay off? For most students, research by Dale and Krueger found little earnings difference, but selective colleges mattered more for students from low-income families and some first-generation students.

Start with who you are

Lens begins with who a student is, through seven short assessments drawn from published research in psychology, and then looks for colleges where they may thrive, using federal data and the colleges' own words. Start with Lens →

Sources

Jeffrey Selingo, talks at Holton-Arms and Pingry; Harvard EdCast
Stanford GSE, "First step in choosing the right college: ignore rankings"
Malcolm Gladwell, Revisionist History, "Lord of the Rankings" (2021), via Rowan University; David and Goliath (2013)
Frank Bruni, Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be (2015), Publishers Weekly
Julie Lythcott-Haims, Learning Leader podcast
Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly and Braving the Wilderness

College Rankings vs. Belonging: What the Experts Say