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If you do not have MSN set as your homepage, you probably did not see that the Princeton Review's 2005 Rankings are out. The Princeton Review makes rankings based on student surveys: a methodology fraught with most of the same problems as any other methodology such as raw quantitative data input into a formula underlain by a rationale that resembles a rabid wombat (see US News and World Report ). Recently, certain parties whose names I remember not and whose web sites are beneath my contempt (well, searching for them is) have tried to apply econometric principles to college rankings. College rankings generally seem to issue from the minds of people who failed the key lesson of seventh grade science: to do an experiment, you must make measurements and know what those measurements represent.

Frankly, Harvard, Yale, or Princeton's top US News rating only seems to mean one thing: said first ranked college is the college of choice for rabid wombats or socially ambitious members of that class that thinks they benefit from the Bush tax cuts but are too scared (or too cheap) to get the truth from their accountant. Occasionally, Caltech makes first or second, which confuses me, since if you want to send the kid to Caltech, you should be able to ask him or her what you should be asking the accountant. Or else it means that there rabid wombats at Caltech (and Anna has never mentioned anyone getting mauled.) I've seen them at MIT, but that's another story.

The Princeton Review at least tries to measure things, even important things. Some might think knowing the top party school in the country is frivolous. No, what's frivolous is sending your kid to SUNY Albany for a degree in atmospheric science and finding out when they graduate that the most turbulent fluids they studied were Bacardi and Skyy. And if they studied a little too hard, they will not even have a degree in mixology, because they weren't exactly paying attention to what they were drinking. And if my hastily formed opinion of SUNY Albany is as erroneous as SUNY Albany's administration believes, the use of student surveys in the Princeton Review's methodology puts the onus on the administration to explain why SUNY Albany's students are more sure that their university is a party school more than any other randomly sampled student body in the country.

But of course, I care the most about my own alma mater. This year, Chicago's libraries were ranked #5, its intercollegiate sports were 18th most non-existent (Descartes's famous principle apparently doesn't apply to our football team, unless there is some sort of relativity-related qualifier), and its student body was decreed to be 19th most politically active (where was UIC ranked, they always seem to be involved in political activity on our campus? On the other hand, I have pamphleted recently...).

But here's the rub. Chicago was rated best overall academic experience, not #6, not #2, but #1. We claim more strenously than anyone else that we are having the most fun academically. I think my point about measurement is quite applicable here. The Princeton Review has simply detected the most important truth about the University of Chicago student: we choose to come to Chicago because we are the most arrogant, delusional, and masochistic scholars in the nation, and this ranking proves it. I'm just kidding... The point is, we don't know much about what this ranking means, but it's very cool. I propose that Michelson House sell t-shirts with the legend, "University of Chicago, Best Overall Academic Experience (and Most Pathological Liars) in the United States of America."

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