The annual U.S. News & World Report college rankings have been announced, and for the first time in 12 years, Harvard tops the list of national universities. Among liberal arts colleges, Amherst and Williams tie for first place.

It may be good for the ego to get into a top10 school, but ranking is no guarantee of educational quality. Some colleges solicit applications from students who will never be admitted, just to increase their selectivity, a factor in the U.S. News rankings.

This year, only 46 percent of the colleges responded to the part of the survey that asks college presidents to rate peer institutions. Since many college presidents don't know enough about other schools to provide an accurate assessment, this part of the U.S. News formula, which accounts for 25 percent of a school's score, has been controversial.

Given the popularity of the U.S. News rankings, other organizations have created their own lists of best colleges. The Templeton Honor Roll profiles 100 schools that emphasize character development. It's no surprise to find religiously affiliated Westmont and Pepperdine on the list, but secular Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth are also named, as well as public institutions like University of Virginia and Colorado State University.

Several years ago, Washington Monthly evaluated colleges to determine which ones are benefiting the country. The magazine looked at how well schools did in fostering research, national service and social mobility, criteria that resulted in a very different group of topranked schools. Public universities that enroll more low-income students did well here. Four UC campuses made the top 10 on this list, while Harvard was ranked 28 because it was weak on national service.

Forbes magazine recently came out with America's Best Colleges, which attempts to rank schools based on the quality of education and how much students achieve after graduation. I give Forbes credit for making an effort to use student feedback, even though I'm not sure that giving student evaluations from ratemyprofessor.com a weight of 25 percent of the score provides a reliable assessment of a school's educational quality.

Another 25 percent of the score comes from the rate of alumni listed in Who's Who in America. The remaining 50 percent of the score is based on average debt at graduation for those who borrowed to attend the college, percentage of students graduating in four years, and rates of students and faculty who have won nationally competitive awards.

What I found interesting is how well smaller colleges did in the Forbes rankings. It makes sense that having professors who offer personal attention increases student satisfaction, so among the top 10 schools, small colleges like Williams, Swarthmore and Amherst came in ahead of Yale and Columbia. But who would expect Centre College, a small liberal arts school in Kentucky, or Wabash College in Indiana to be ranked higher than MIT, Stanford and Brown?

The median undergraduate enrollment in the Forbes top 50 schools is 2,285 students, and the only school in the top 50 that has more than 10,000 undergraduates is the University of Virginia. UC Berkeley is ranked 73rd and other UC campuses did relatively well on the list of 569 schools.

The different rankings reflect the values of the organizations that sponsor them. What matters to you may not be the same as what U.S. News, Washington Monthly or Forbes deems significant in evaluating colleges. It's important to look critically at all of these rankings. They sell magazines and can be fun to read, but the bottom line is that there's no "best" college. There are best colleges for each student, and those should be at the top of your list.

Audrey Kahane, MS, MFA, is a counselor who can be reached at (818) 704-7545.