The rankings are popular with the general public (for their 2014 release,[needs update] usnews.com garnered 2.6 million unique visitors and 18.9 million page views in one day[3]), and influence high school seniors' application patterns (a 2011 study found that a one-rank improvement leads to a 0.9% increase in number of applicants[4]). However, they have been widely denounced by many higher education experts. Detractors argue that they ignore individual fit by comparing institutions with widely diverging missions on the same scale,[5] imply a false precision by deriving an ordinal ranking from questionable data,[6] encourage gamesmanship by institutions looking to improve their rank,[7] and contribute to the admissions frenzy by unduly highlighting prestige.[8]