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Centrepiece Online | Spring 2009
Fun with Forbes 13th Ranking
by Mike Norris, Director of Communications
When Forbes magazine unveiled its "America's Best Colleges" list in August, institutions of all types were combined into one grouping. The editors offered this rationale:
“When choosing a college, prospective students ultimately select only one… It is not as though a high school senior selects one large, public school and one small, private school. The senior picks only one, and our ranking reflects that decision process.”
So in addition to being measured against Amherst, Swarthmore, and Williams, Centre was grouped with Harvard, Princeton, Yale, M.I.T., Stanford and a host of other universities.
The result? Forbes ranked Centre 13th among all U.S. colleges and universities – four slots behind Yale, one above MIT, 10 above Stanford.
Unlike U.S. News which largely measures inputs such as reputation and resources, Forbes focused on the experience and outcomes of students and used such measures as listings of alumni in Who’s Who in America, Web-based professor rankings, the amount of student debt at graduation, the percentage graduating in four years, and the percentage of students or faculty who have won nationally competitive awards.
Reactions around the country were immediate and passionate: They ranged from "no way" to "hooray."
Centre sentiment was overwhelmingly in the later category. When riddles and one-liners began to travel spontaneously around campus, the Communications Office, ever alert to an opportunity for good-natured competition, quickly conceived "The Lucky 13 Contest."
The instructions for this lighthearted look at the rankings were simple: Open to all with a Centre connection. Send your take on the Forbes ranking as a riddle, a one-liner, a tight paragraph, a poem, a picture – beyond the limits of local, state and federal law… no restrictions.
Entries came from around the campus and the country. A sampling:
Jack Smith '79 posed his entry in the form of a question and answer: "Think 13 is unlucky? Five hundred and fifty-six other undergraduate institutions only wish they were that lucky."
Susan C. Brown, parent of David Brown '08 and Laura Brown '12, made a "reverse-field" move in her entry: "Centre: Ranked No. 13 among all U.S. colleges and universities. Luck has nothing to do with it."
The Third Place Award went to Jeffrey Huff '84. A number of entrants made use of the word, "triskaidekaphobia," a fear of the number 13. Huff played off this term in his one-word winning entry:
"Triskadeca-forbes-ulous"
Claiming the Second Place Award was Thomas Richards '11. Thomas combined play on the C6 H0 formula with an observation on the changing geography of academic prestige with the: "C13 H3 – Closing the gap between the Bluegrass and the Ivy League."
The Grand Prize was claimed by Jill Hoskins Fritz ’86, parent of David Fritz ’11 and spouse of Greg Fritz ’86. Titled "Lucky Number 13," Fritz's essay began by making the point that Centre College has 13 letters. She then proceeded to point out the lucky significance of the number in question, 13 ways from Sunday. An excerpt:
Lucky Number 13! A Happy number in its Prime! Lucky enough for the Archimedean Solids! Lucky enough to be traditionally associated with transformation, renewal, and regeneration…For the Original Colonies! For the stars on our Original Flag! For the stripes on our flag still today! For the Great Seal of the United States with 13 olives leaves with 13 olives, 13 arrows and a constellation of 13 stars that together form a triangle over our eagle with the number 13 on each point. For the 13 steps on the pyramid! For the 13 bars on the shield. For the 13 letters in E PLURIBUS UNUM. Lucky enough for…our 13 of campus buildings in the National Register…! For the education of 13 U.S. Senators! Lucky enough for the coming year when Centre opens its doors to the Class of 2013! Celebrate our Lucky 13!
Each winner received, of course, 13 fabulous prizes (As the promotional flier noted, some prizes are more fabulous than others.)
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Phone: (859) 238-5717
Fax: (859) 238-5723
E-mail: alumnews@centre.edu
or johnsond@centre.edu
Anonymous Entry to ‘The Lucky 13 Contest’
Submitted anonymously and thus not eligible for competition, the poem below was discovered at midnight on the steps of the Breeze House by a Communications staffer who was coming in late to do some research on John Todd Stuart. Attached to the verses was a note in handwriting resembling that of Abraham Lincoln (which has subsequently disappeared) explaining that the poem was found in an amber-colored bottle that had washed up on the shores of Lake Herrington. Along with the rhyme was an instruction to deliver the poem to Breeze House and a brief apology to James Agee, Robert Service and Dr. Seuss.Public Safety has not been able to determine who left the poem and note on the steps of the Breeze, but did surmise from muddy tracks leading to and from the steps that the individual was a tall man wearing unusually large boots.
The poem reads as follows:
Let us now praise famous schools
Let us sing the praises of famous schools,
At the sound of whose names, the public drools.
They’re the best of the best, the crème de la crème.
It’s hard to imagine being better than them.There’s Vandy and Emory and MIT,
Chicago, Lafayette, Washington & Lee,
U.C. Berkeley and William and Mary,
Sewanee, Sarah Lawrence, and Middlebury.
Don’t forget Duke, Bowdoin, or Barnard,
Stanford, Haverford, or Harvey Mudd.
And the surly sages would surely frown
If we omitted Kenyon, Carleton, or Brown.
Not to mention Davidson, Wash U., or U. Penn,
Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Georgetown, or Furman.
And those in the know know it wouldn’t be nice
If we left out Macalester, Brandeis, or Rice,
Scripts or Richmond, Texas A & M,
Smith or Dartmouth or Notre Dame,
Pomona, Virginia, Cornell, or Grinnell,
UNC, Johns Hopkins, Bard, or Bucknell.We could go on, but it wouldn’t be fair
To refrain from naming the thing that they share.
Great institutions all, each one a winner—
What they have in common? All chasing Centre!