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Feature
Title: The Negative Side of Rankings
Author: Kennedy Thedford
Tags: opinion, agnes scott, ranking, college, competition
Photo by Pang Yuhao on https://unsplash.com/
I was overjoyed when Agnes Scott College was ranked the #1 Most Innovative and #2 Best Undergraduate Teaching. This college really is innovative and has amazing professors and faculty. All these accolades are piling up, but I think its a bad idea. A couple of months ago, I was talking to a  Georgia Tech student from the Bio Medical Engineer Department. What I learned there makes me cautious for the future of Agnes.
I was told that Georgia Tech used to be amazing at teaching, until rankings were released. Even though Georgia Tech is still a great school, the focus is on how much research or how many engineers the school produces, in order to stay on top as one of the best engineering schools. The pressure is heavy, and Agnes is starting to feel it too. The focus has shifted a little to how we appear to the prospectives. We can’t talk about Main, or the housing stress,or other things that shows the humanity of an institution. I see what happened to my high school creeping into my college.
My high school opened my sophomore year. My freshman year, we were a magnet school, connected with a bigger school. When we opened I was so excited. It was a pretty building, with only 300 students, and the teachers were amazing. Then came the pressure. It was a performing arts high school, and the arts are not STEM so skepticism   is constantly present. I feel like since Agnes is a women’s college, the same pressure applies . My high school succeeded, and we received our first nominations for the Georgia High School Musical Awards. We played at Carnegie Hall, which made us one of the best 100 high schools in the state. Then, the whole point of the administration was to look good. We started letting in too many students. I still love my high school but it put rankings and looks first.
With Agnes wanting more and more students are they becoming my high school? I think this beloved college of mine needs to slow down. Agnes was great before the ranking. I applied here because of the love I received. Applying to a college just because of ranking is not a way to find the right education.
I spent high school going after titles and rankings, and it was my experience with my friends that taught me that those titles are nice but sometimes they can be a burden not a gift. I hope Agnes uses this ranking to be a gift.