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Dartmouth college improved two places in the 2011 university ranking and has shown considerable improvement. In the annual Forbes Magazine list, the college jumped 60 places. However considering world ranking by the Times Higher Education and other lists that take into account research oriented graduate programs of the universities, Dartmouth continues to lag behind.

For the second consecutive year, Dartmouth stands first for best teaching at the undergraduate level according to US News ranking. From this it is evident that this college ranks high in surveys that take into account the academic performance of students. Its success can also be attributed to the method in which rankings are now calculated. There was a strong emphasis placed on official evaluation at similar institutions and a study on survey conducted of high school counselors according to the website of the US News.

In studies conducted by the US News, there is at least 75%weightage placed on graduation rates and other measures that measures academic quality. The remaining one fourth evaluation is based on officials and high school counselor’s assessment. 

At least 7.5% of the total score was accounted for by the graduate rate performance this year. This is essentially the difference between predicted rate and the actual rate. According to many college counselors, Dartmouth ranks high in national surveys at pre-professional graduate program level too.
The reason why this university is unable to rank high in international rankings is because these rankings use formulas that consider institutions catering to a large number of graduate students according to the university website College Confidential’s senior advisor, Sally Rubenstone.

In the world ranking university listing by the London based Times Higher Education, Dartmouth stood in the 99th place. In the list of top North American Universities, this universities stood 57th. According to Rubenstone, this is because the world views college value and prestige in a different manner as compared to the Americans.

Dartmouth is a university offering pre-professional engineering, business and medical graduation programs and is not focused on graduate programs that are result oriented, which is what the international surveys are based on, says Rubenstone.

There are many factors that international rankings take into account including bachelors and doctorate ration, number of faculty members awarded with academic prizes on an international level and citations received by faculty for academic documents, according to Rubenstone.
When ranking takes into account factors such as graduation rates, rate of admission, SAT scores and class ranking of applicants, then Dartmouth College fares very well, according to Rubenstone.
Most counselors, including Ruben opined that students must not give too much importance to college rankings as different lists tend to show different results. In the process of decision making, international students give a lot of importance to university rankings as compared to their American peers.

A Seattle High School University Prep’s college counselling director, Kelly Herrington said that this is because international students do not have a firsthand report and account of educational institutions in our country.