Baala Shakya, Staff Photographer

For seven days, Rank Yale, a student-created site, allowed undergraduates to vote on their peers’ popularity, ultimately generating Top 100 lists for each class year.

3,599 students — a little over half the undergraduate population — used the site and submitted around 669,000 votes before the site closed down for voting Thursday night. Each user was limited to 100 votes per day, and rankings fluctuated throughout the week, powered by an Elo algorithm similar to chess scoring systems.

“I like building things that people use,” Addison Goolsbee ’25, a computer science major who created the website, told the News. “I thought this would be something people liked — and a lot of people did like it. A lot of people didn’t like it, though. That was an interesting dynamic.”

Though Goolsbee said he initially wanted to build a platform ranking the prestige of Yale clubs, he pivoted to people, finding the idea “way more fun.”

He described Rank Yale as “part prank, part social experiment,” referencing inevitable comparisons to Mark Zuckerberg’s 2003 Harvard platform, Facemash. Goolsbee said he was careful to avoid privacy violations, allowing students to opt out on the first day — a feature he said was ultimately used by 122 students.

“I got a few comparisons with Facemash and Zuckerberg. I mean, like, obviously that was part of the inspiration,” Goolsbee told the News. “It wasn’t actually how I came to the idea, but when I came to the idea, I realized, oh, that’s super similar. I can use that for some design tips.”

Zuckerberg appeared before the administrative board on account of “breaching security, violating copyrights and violating individual privacy.” Goolsbee told the News that he was very careful in ensuring his platform did not violate the data usage policies.

“Some people got really obsessive,” Goolsbee said. “But that made the final result kind of the ultimate joke: the number one person was me.”

Despite its tongue-in-cheek tone — including a satirical  “sandwich mode” feature for turning student profile photos into an image of a sandwich — the site stirred deeper conversations about Yale’s social dynamics.

“To be honest, I did not expect to be ranked. I’m technically not a current sophomore — I’m on a gap — and I am not involved in many things on campus right now,” said Iris Henry ’27, who was ranked first in the class of 2027. “I also think Rank Yale as a whole is a pretty questionable idea. Even if it was not to be taken seriously, I think it can feed into some of the more toxic dynamics that already exist here.”

Henry, who never visited the site while it was live, also called Rank Yale “kind of like Tinder for popularity.”

“Even if it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, it can feed into the more toxic dynamics that already exist here,” she said. “Yale can feel elitist — especially socially. A lot of clubs are built around exclusivity. Combine that with the academic pressure, and people start tying their self-worth to things like success or social validation.”

Henry added that many students didn’t take the platform seriously and got a laugh from seeing their names — or their friends’ — appear. But she still questioned the motivations behind the project.

“I still find myself questioning the motivation behind creating a platform centered around ranking peers,” said Henry. “It reinforces the idea that your value on campus can be quantified or voted on.”

Henry also acknowledged, however, that at the same time, there wasn’t a “single type” of person ranked. She noted that the top 100 lists had students from all sorts of communities, which “maybe helped show that these surface-level things aren’t as important as we think.”

Others noted that the inclusion of Yale ID photos in the voting process may have introduced visual bias.

“I think having pictures made students more likely to vote for people they found attractive, even if they didn’t know them,” said Jack Carney ’28.

Goolsbee agreed that profile images influenced votes — but not always in predictable ways.

“I’ve met people who always voted for someone with a photo as a kind of protest,” he said. “It wasn’t always about attractiveness.”

He also pointed out that Yale’s ID photos, unlike curated social media pictures, were “basically mugshots,” which made the platform feel less performative. “That’s part of why I think this ended up being less toxic than Facemash,” he said.

Now that the site has shut down, Goolsbee said he has no plans to relaunch it.

Five members of the current Yale Daily News Managing Board were among the Top 100 in their respective classes.