At some point is Cornell going to say "To hell with the U.S. News & World Report of America's Best Colleges rankings?"

Our alma mater currently ranks 12th in the yearly list of "America's Best Colleges." And let me be clear: I'm not bitter about that specific ranking. Of the more than 4,000 institutions in the United States that grant degrees, 12th is pretty good (given the factors that we were judged on).

My problem is with the rankings in general: "America's Best Colleges." What defines "best?" What gives U.S. News & World Report the right to decide?

These rankings have become a factor in people deciding what school they would go to. A friend in high school told me that he picked Duke over Columbia because Duke "ranked higher in U.S. News." (Duke is No. 8; Columbia is No. 9).

U.S. News takes into account endowment per student and alumni donations, among other factors. Are variables like these representative of the experiences that we have while we're on East Hill?

To calculate Cornell's "selectivity," the rankings look at undergraduates' high school GPA and SAT scores. Nearly 15 percent of our ranking in U.S. News & World Report is based on characteristics that undergraduates had before they were even associated with Cornell.

At the Cornell Board of Trustees' meeting in March, I applauded comments made by Provost Biddy Martin in her Academic State of the University address. The provost pointed out some of the ridiculous flaws with the ranking methodology. The sacrifices that we would have to make to even move us up a few places are absurd.

And if we really got desperate to try to move our rankings, we can always just send a dollar bill to each one of our alumni and ask them to send it back. Eureka! 100 percent alumni participation!

The rankings don't take into account the variety of classes we take, the experiences we have in extracurricular activities or the research opportunities available to us.

As a Hotelie, I have been able to study astronomy with one of the chief researchers on the Mars rover mission. I was able to take psychology with my classmates in Doha, Qatar. How is that calculated into the rankings? As a Cornell student, I was able to attend lectures by the U.S. Ambassador to Palestine, hear from an associate editor of The New York Times and attend a talk given by the Dalai Lama. What category are these experiences reflected in?

Undergraduate Cornellians are able to study abroad and take on leadership opportunities that will teach them more practical lessons than they can ever learn in the classroom.

Being a Cornellian is much more than some ranking in a magazine. Being a Cornellian is about having pride in athletics, smiling when we hear the alma mater or appreciating the education we are receiving, even when there is a foot of snow on the ground.

Cornell is not like any other university. As a transnational university, we are larger than a lot of our peer institutions, which immediately puts us at a disadvantage when it comes to the endowment-per-student category. The rankings don't take into account our premedical counterparts at the Doha campus, either.

As a community, let's come together and say "to hell with the America's Best Colleges rankings." Harvard and Princeton have set trends with early admissions. I think we should set the trend that says we don't care about the list that U.S. News & World Report creates every year to sell magazines.

Let's go beyond our refusal to fill out the peer review survey or to provide information on our acceptance rates, endowment, etc.

Let's ask them not to rank us entirely.

It sounds radical. But by submitting our statistics and participating in the survey, aren't we saying, as a university, that we agree with the way the rank is formulated? Do the powers that be really think that the undergraduate experience should be characterized by a few factors, including high school GPA, SAT scores and alumni participation?

When people ask why Cornell has chosen not to participate in the rankings, let's be firm in saying that the experiences we have here are far greater than any number.

C.J. Slicklen '09, a student in the School of Hotel Administration, is president of the Student Assembly.