(Source: Pomona College)

At least to some of us. As is customary, the magazine released a preview of its annual fall rankings to college PR folks. The results remain embargoed, but the advance notice gives colleges an opportunity to spin the results accordingly.

Meanwhile, the backlash continues. Witness this piece from the Associated Press:

U.S. News & World Report releases its annual college rankings Friday in the face of the loudest and best-organized criticism from educators the magazine has ever encountered.

But for all the complaints that the rankings warp college admissions and distract colleges from educating students, U.S. News still has the upper hand. Colleges are having a hard time quitting the magazine's annual beauty contest.

Sixty-two colleges have enlisted in an anti-rankings campaign led by education activist Lloyd Thacker. But a quick Web search shows even some of those schools haven't fulfilled a pledge to stop using their rankings to advertise themselves. And none of the highest-ranked schools have formally signed on.

Interviews by The Associated Press with top officials at about a dozen elite colleges confirm a fault line in the rankings debate that's more than coincidence: It irks educators everywhere to see colleges ranked like basketball teams. But it irks educators at the top-ranked colleges a lot less.

"The list isn't perfect but it isn't totally evil either," said David Oxtoby, the president of Pomona College in California, the No. 7 liberal arts college on last year's list. The popular rankings are a way for students and parents to get information, he said, and most know better than to take a college's specific placement too seriously.

The debate has been raging since the magazine began ranking colleges in the 1980s. But the focus this year is on Thacker, a longtime admissions counselor who has made it his mission to restore educational values to what he calls an over-commercialized college selection process. Thacker has been circulating a letter calling on colleges to boycott a portion of the rankings, to swear off using them for self-promotion, and to develop an alternative - something he also is pursuing.

He's received lots of attention and encouragement from the top schools. But so far no liberal arts colleges ranked higher than No. 30 on last year's list has signed the letter, nor have any of the top 100 universities.

Still curious about this year's rankings? I can't divulge much, but suffice it to say that Princeton, Harvard and Yale fare well, while my alma mater, Penn, comes in fifth. Heavens.