By Brendan O’Reilly

A dozen liberal arts college presidents authored a letter to hundreds of their equivalents across the country urging them not to respond to the U.S. News & World Report magazine’s survey on institutional reputations.

The survey accounts for 25 percent of the scores that determine rankings.

“We believe these rankings are misleading and do not serve well the interests of prospective students in finding a college or university that is well suited to their education beyond high school,” the letter reads. It goes on to say that the rankings from the U.S. News & World Report “imply a false precision and authority that is not warranted by the data they use.”

The letter also asks college presidents to refuse to use the rankings in promotions and as indicators of the quality of their institutions.

In U.S. News’ list of “America’s Best Colleges” for 2007, the University is ranked as a third tier national university, not a desirable ranking.

“Often, as we have seen here at Hofstra, as our quality has improved, reputation lags. The reality of a school’s quality and these types of surveys don’t measure rapid change particularly well,” said Melissa Connolly, the vice president of University relations.

Connolly said the University shares the frustration with other colleges over rankings, but it will, for the meantime, continue to participate in the U.S. News survey. “It is important for prospective students to look at many measures of quality, not just one set of rankings,” Connolly added, “because all rankings have some imperfect and subjective measurements.”

The University is also ranked by the Princeton Review. The Review lists the University as one of the 361 best colleges in America and one of the 222 best Northeastern colleges. However, the University was also placed on the top 20 lists for students dissatisfied with financial aid, little race/class interaction, least happy students and poor town-gown relations.