Brown ranks 12th on a new college-ranking list published by U.S. News and World Report, beating out two fellow Ivies.
This single-variable list, released online on Monday, uses yield - the percentage of students accepted that enrolls at a college - to determine the most popular colleges, according to Robert Morse, the director of data research at the magazine.
Brown stands higher on U.S. News' new "Most Popular Colleges" list than on its more established list of the "Best Colleges," on which it places 16th, behind all of its Ivy League counterparts.
In U.S. News' popularity ranking, Brown's 56 percent yield placed it ahead of both Dartmouth and Cornell. Harvard - which saw 79 percent of the students it admitted matriculate - topped the list. It also topped U.S. News' more prominent list in 2008.
"This list shows how prized some of these acceptances are," Morse said, adding that the yield is a statistic based mainly on student choice and is therefore "not a very strong academic factor."
Dean of Admissions James Miller '73 said he did not give too much weight to the list, characterizing it as a "silly survey" that was "not representative of much of anything."
But, he added, "Any survey where we're among the best colleges in the country - I'm delighted to be there."
U.S. News stopped using yield as one of the factors in its widely looked-to "Best Colleges" list because it is not a reliable statistic, Morse said.
Miller agreed yield was unreliable. "I'm not saying anyone manipulated it, but it can be easily manipulated," he said.
Morse also mentioned other problems with using yield to rank schools. Religious schools such as Brigham Young University and Yeshiva University ranked in the top ten on the "Most Popular Colleges" list mainly because "they have a unique relationship with their applicants," he said.
Yield for some schools, he said, "is impacted by early decision. It is artificially boosting the yield."
Military academies also have very high yields because of their lengthy application processes and free tuition. State and public schools rank high because they are cheaper and closer to home for most students, Morse said. In the current economic climate, more public schools will make the list simply because students cannot afford out-of-state or private colleges, he added.
