The Foreign Service Journal, December 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2014 69 incentives to admitted students to retake SATs to get a higher score; not admitting students with lower scores until later in the year after data is submitted; and, of course, encouraging as many students as possible to apply, even if they have no hope of being admitted, simply so the school can reject more of them, upping its selectivity. Some schools have been found to conveniently “leave out” SAT and other admission test scores of their interna- tional applicants, as non-native English speakers tend to do poorly on these tests. Other schools have reported as an applicant anyone who had completed even part of their application, even if that student never actually applied. When colleges have been discovered to have deliberately falsi ed data, as Claremont-McKenna did a few years ago, they have been “punished” by being left o the list for a year. In the latest U.S. News “Best Colleges” list, Clare- mont-McKenna is back, with a coveted number-eight ranking among national liberal arts colleges. Even though U.S. News and other ranking indexes rely on independent data services to a certain extent, most of the data they receive is from the colleges themselves. Flagler College in Florida is the latest college among a growing list to have admitted to in ating data such as SAT scores for the U.S. News rankings. The Pressure of Rank As mentioned earlier, some colleges have chosen not to take part in ranking indexes. Reed College is perhaps the most notable, yet U.S. News still ranks it #77 of national liberal arts colleges, based on data gathered elsewhere—a rank some experts feel is meaningless. (Reed provides its own data on its website.) But most colleges do take part in at