I think so too, Christina. People refuse to admit that the choices they make are governed, in large part, by visceral factors and not by "logical" analysis (whatever that means). For lots of ordinary choices, we can get by without admitting this, because it's easy enough to construct reasons, post-hoc, for why we chose the way we did. But when the choice set is seemingly infinite - when accomplished people are given a choice of colleges, law schools, or jobs, all of which they're qualified for and nearly all of which they could get - there's no way we can come up with logical reasons for why we chose one place over another. ("Why'd you choose to go to Penn?" "Oh, I loved the people there." "Did you even visit Wash U.?" "No, but Penn was closer to home." "But what about the thirty other schools that are even closer?" "Penn was ranked higher.") Not being able to come up with logical reasons scares us, and so the market becomes ripe for a beneficent messenger from the sky - U.S. News & World Report, or Vault - to make the decision for us. Rankings bring the choice set down from hundreds or thousands to the more manageable dozen or so choices that fit in whatever tier our grades and other accomplishments seem to put us. And so we're able to breathe easy, knowing that our choices are "logical" and that we had some non-arbitrary basis for making the "right choice" about which college/law school/firm would make us the happiest, and we didn't have to actually visit and learn about all three thousand of them.

I know when I decide on colleges or law schools or jobs (or restaurants, for that matter), the major dilemma is not that I don't know how to choose which ones will make me happy, but rather that all of the possible choices are worthy. It becomes very stressful to decide, because even though the rational thing to do, in the face of many choices any of which would be great, would be to just flip a coin and save on decision costs... Well, that just wouldn't be very satisfying, would it? So most people are willing to pay the $5.95 or $19.95 or whatever it is that buying a rankings guide costs, to mitigate some of that nagging unease that comes with making decisions that aren't obvious.

-- MichaelBerkovits - 20 Feb 2008