Princeton took the number one spot in the U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings list for the second straight year.

The U.S. News and World Report’s well-known list of top universities, released Thursday, ranks Princeton ahead of both Harvard and Yale, which tied for second.

But while some Harvard students may be disappointed by the second-place finish, others emphasize that while the College may not be U.S. News’ number one, it’s still on top—if the rankings even matter at all.

“It is insane to worry about whether Harvard, Princeton, or for that matter Yale, is number 1, 2 or 3,” said Ronald G. Ehrenberg, the director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, in an e-mail message. Ehrenberg co-wrote a paper with James Monks of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education in the November/December issue of Chance Magazine that studied statistical trends in 30 colleges and universities.

“The real fact is that the resources that these three institutions bring to bear to educate their students are so much larger than the resources that the other Ivies have that they are in a class of their own,” Ehrenberg said.

Since its debut in 1983, U.S. News’ rankings have become the most high-profile of the college guides. While widely criticized, the guide is eagerly anticipated by both college-bound students and their parents, as well as the colleges themselves, because application numbers can be affected by the rankings.

While Ehrenberg criticized the rankings’ usefulness, he said that they do have an impact on prospective students and college administrators’ admissions decisions.

“The rankings definitely do matter,” he said. “When an institution improves in the rankings—other factors held constant—the next year it gets more applicants, can accept a smaller fraction, has a higher yield on its accepted applicants, the students who enroll have higher test scores and it can get away with offering less generous financial aid packages. Conversely, if the institution’s rank worsens, just the opposite happens.”

According to the U.S. News website, the schools are ranked by “indicators of academic quality” and a “nonpartisan view of what matters in an education.” The schools are each given scores determined by academic reputation (25 percent), student selectivity (15 percent), faculty resources (20 percent), graduation and retention rate (20 percent), financial resources (10 percent), alumni giving (5 percent) and graduation rate performance (5 percent).

The guide, “America’s Best Colleges 2002,” ranks nearly 1,400 institutions and is available on newsstands.

Andrea Shen, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ assistant director of communications, said that though students may look at the rankings, they take multiple factors into consideration when choosing a college.

“We have no way of really knowing how much of a role the rankings play in prospective students’ decisions,” Shen said. “While we appreciate being recognized in the rankings, we chiefly focus on trying to provide the best education possible.”