In 2017, the University of California, Berkeley, tied with UCLA as the number one public university in the country, according to the U.S. News & World Report 2018 rankings — the “kingpin” of college rankings lists, admissions experts say. Such accolades weren’t anything new for a school many still consider the crown jewel of the so-called public Ivies.

In July, months after Berkeley dropped to number two in the latest national public university rankings, Jua Howard, assistant director of admissions at Berkeley, told Forbes magazine that “the criteria utilized in rankings are subjective and often confusing” and that a college’s rank should not “dictate where a student applies and ultimately attends.” Juxtaposed with the university’s institutional messaging promoting the rankings, Howard's comments speak to a system that both criticizes them and downplays their importance.

“Any admissions officer worth their position knows rankings like the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges list are capitalistic undertakings rooted in junk science,” wrote former Wesleyan University dean of admissions Jason England in a Vox editorial in May.

“[T]here are many excellent reasons to apply to Yale, but Yale’s position in the rankings is not one of them,” Jeffrey Brenzel, former Yale dean of admissions, is attributed as saying on the university’s website.

Just 10 days after Howard was published in Forbes questioning the worth of the rankings system, U.S. News & World Report released a statement saying that five schools, including Berkeley, had been misreporting their data to the publication for years, unfairly giving them higher places on the annual “best colleges” list, among other rankings, than the schools deserved. Berkeley, according to U.S. News, had inflated its alumni giving rate since at least 2014, when the school says data reporting requirements for alumni donations changed. The news broke about two months after the University of Oklahoma also forfeited its ranking for misreporting the same type of data to the publication for two decades (a former student is now suing the university for allegedly misleading her about its qualifications as an institution).

Although these types of scandals aren’t unprecedented, the latest bout of misreporting — especially by Berkeley, a school consistently ranked as the best public university in the country — has inspired a broader conversation about whether college officials care about rankings at all. Conventional wisdom fostered by many school officials is straightforward: The rankings are inherently flawed and therefore not important. But if the rankings supposedly don’t matter, why do these colleges even participate in the process of ranking themselves? And why is it such a big deal when they misreport data?

“It’s absolute nonsense that they don’t put a lot of stock into the rankings,” Brian Taylor, managing director of the college consulting firm Ivy Coach, told Teen Vogue. “The jobs of the deans and admissions officers depend on these rankings.”

If a school were to drop significantly in the U.S. News rankings, Taylor said, the dean of admissions at that college “wouldn’t be there for very long.” According to Taylor, downplaying to parents and students the importance of the rankings to college administrators is just part of their “M.O.”

"Any admissions officer who suggests that college rankings don’t matter, I wouldn’t believe anything else they say,” he added.

“Everybody in higher [education] thinks the rankings are awful ... but they matter a lot,” said William Deresiewicz, who taught English at Yale and Columbia and is the author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. Deresiewicz served as a guest faculty member four years ago at Scripps College, one of the five schools removed from the 2019 U.S. News rankings in July. Scripps, like Berkeley, misreported alumni giving rates, giving the school a boost on the list.