A majority of students who said that they relied on a source of rankings in deciding where to enroll, reported that this information made them more interested in a college or university or more comfortable with decisions they had already made.

In our study, we asked students if their interest in a school had changed based on the rankings. In particular, we wanted to know if the rankings used by students had made them more or less interested in certain colleges, encouraged them to consider schools for the first time, or actually made them rule out certain college or universities. Again, it is important to note that we only posed this question to those students who indicated that they relied most on US News or another source of rankings to make critical decisions about where to attend college.