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In an article published last month, the New York Times reported that university officials from across the country are concerned about their schools’ national academic rankings and have actively implemented policies in order to improve their rankings.

But UCLA officials have said they do not take the rankings into consideration because some criteria used to rate schools are irrelevant to the quality of education.

Some examples of criteria used include the average alumni-giving rate and the student-to-faculty ratio.

UCLA administrators said that in many cases they do not have direct control over these issues; for example, the state controls the student-to-faculty ratio, said Judith Smith, vice provost for undergraduate education.

“I would say that some of the rankings are based on measures that we have been concerned about and that we would like to improve,” Smith said, adding that UCLA officials do not set out to improve the university’s rank itself.

But Smith said the measures used to determine the rankings do not equate to a good undergraduate education, so UCLA will not aggressively pursue a high ranking.

“Some of the categories don’t make any sense. They include things in the rankings that I think are unrelated to the quality of the undergraduate education,” she said, referring to categories such as the average alumni-giving rate.

Though UCLA does depend on endowment money, Smith says there has never been any pressure from administrators for students to donate money.

“From the moment you’re a freshman (in Harvard), that’s what they talk about. The class gives back. UCLA hasn’t ever done that,” said Smith.

Harvard nets a 44 percent average alumni-giving rate, while UCLA has about 15 percent.

UCLA has consistently ranked in the mid-20s in past years. It was recently ranked No. 26 in U.S. News & World Report’s “Best National Universities 2007” – a drop from last year’s No. 25 spot.

But with over 50,000 applicants under its belt this year, Smith said UCLA does not need to and is not going to actively attempt to improve its ranking. She added that the rankings do not have much of an impact on the number of applications UCLA receives.

“We don’t think the rankings hurt us, (but) the rankings don’t help us. We don’t have people who are wringing their hands because we’re not high (in the rankings),” Smith said.

But the drop did not go unnoticed by Brian Mercer, a first-year mechanical engineering student, who used the rankings as his chief resource in determining where to apply.

“I didn’t know a lot about colleges, so I ... just looked at the rankings,” he said. “The ones that were ranked kind of high were the ones I looked at.”

Though UCLA has consistently placed high in the rankings, Smith said public universities and private universities will never have equal footing when it comes to rankings because public schools do not have as much money to fund large scholarships and other student programs.

“If you look at a private school they may need about $30,000 per student. Our students have the same needs but we have less than $18,000 per student and that gap gets translated in several things. One is a different student-faculty ratio,” Smith said.

UCLA’s average student-to-faculty ratio is 18 to 1, a far cry from Princeton’s 5 to 1 ratio. But within the UCLA College, the ratio rises even further to 30 to 1.

“I would argue that the ratio is not where it should be ... but in the end, the state legislatures determine the ... student-to-faculty ratio,” Smith said, adding that any improvements on UCLA’s part are made without consideration of the rankings.

The state also sets the faculty salaries, another factor in the rankings.

In spite of the prestige of attending a top university, students said increasingly they are using other determinants and sources to decide what university to attend.

Jason Katz, founder and counselor at JKatz College Counseling in Silicon Valley, has noted the influence of the rankings on his clients.

“A lot of students use the rankings as a sort of guide. It’s not viable, though. I generally tell them that it doesn’t make a difference where you go to school, it makes a bigger difference what you do at the school,” said Katz, who puts more weight on books such as “Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About College,” than on rankings.

Mercer said that in the end, personal preferences outweighed rankings for him.

“Berkeley was way up there, and I got in there, and even though UCLA was ranked low in my department, it was still high overall,” said Mercer, who favored the ideal proximity of the UCLA campus to his home.