The whole, in this case, is less useful than the sum of its parts. The aggregated score, however, is an opaque value that reveals little about life at a given college. Many of these statistics are, of course, beneficial to the public - a prospective student deserves to know what a college’s graduation rate and typical class size are. News & World Report issues its “Best Colleges” ranking, it is not immediately apparent what the top colleges have more of, relative to their lower-ranked peers - ‘bestness?’ The real answer, it turns out, is an arbitrarily weighted average of statistics such as test scores, alumni donation rates and “peer assessments” from surveys that university administrators use to rate their rivals. There is something almost irrational about trying to distill every aspect of a university into a single, rankable measurement of its quality.

A reasonable addition to this list of activities that you are better off without would be worrying - or even thinking - about Tufts’ spot in college rankings. There are many examples that might sound familiar to Tufts students: arguing with strangers on Sidechat, refreshing Instagram for the millionth time in a day or waiting in long lines for the bathrooms on the main floor of Tisch (it’s almost always faster to use the ones downstairs). Students find many different approaches to deal with this problem, but one tip we recommend is to avoid activities that waste your time - those that truly have no purpose and bring no joy. One of the biggest challenges in the transition to college is time management.

Forbes sidetalk