In my opinion, the author Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963) wants to confirm the accuracy of comparing universities by comprehensive ranking system of the U.S. News Ranking. He used the analysis by himself of the detailed information that given by U.S News of undergraduate academic reputation, graduation and freshman retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity financial resources, graduation rate performance, alumni giving and the explanation of Morse who is the Director of Data Research Robert. After I read the whole essay, 

I felt surprised about the author found the opinion of the Director Morse and a lot of particular data and information that offered by U.S. News to support his viewpoint. These information made the essay seem like that it is so closed to reality and made readers can accept his ideas more easily. And I also was attracted by this essay, because the situation it expressed could make me think about the environment with my real life and then agree with his opinion. For example, when I read the fact that “price” was not include as a variable in the U.S. News college rankings, I have considered all students in UNL. Plenty of students are local American, but there are also many international students in the campus. For American students, if their family is near to the college, they can go back for relaxing. If they came from other cities or states, they can rent or buy an apartment for their university career with their identities of American citizen. These American students can enjoy the benefit policy that American government offers to them and pay less money for their apartment. But for international student, it is not easy for them to go back to their countries so that they must to live in campus or rent an apartment. Because they are not American citizens, sometimes they need to pay some insurance for their apartments. It is impossible to compare the “price” between two universities because the average prices of each university are very hard to measure. The price that an international student need to pay is much more than American student’s. And for different family, the maximum of students’ tuitions that parents can support are not same. For some family, three thousand dollars of tuition are not very expensive. But for some family, it is very hard for them to offer the three thousand dollars’ tuition. The author just used less than one paragraph to make me think too much about his idea and agree with him, it fascinate me too much.

Malcolm Gladwell (b, 1963)