The 2018 US News Best Colleges rankings have now gone live on the US News website.
Top 10 National Universities (ties indicated by “=”):
Top 10 Liberal Arts Colleges (ties indicated by “=”):
Haverford fell so much this year… I think 18 is the lowest they’ve ever been and they were in the top 10 consistently not too long ago.
Interesting to see UCLA, Berkeley, and USC all tied.
3 way tie for top 3 LACs is interesting. Middlebury and Pomona are only one point behind them. Wonder why Pomona has such low counselor ratings (#13)- confusion with Cal Poly Pomona? Could have been a top 3 without peer assessment.
Wwow… Both PSU & UIUC drop out of To-50! Not a good day for B1G ‘mid-tier’ academic institutions based on this year’s USNWR ranking imho… My beloved tOSU though once again, falls short of making the Top-50 (tied with UCB for Best Undergraduate Teaching!! :p). It is nevertheless ranked ahead of a few traditionally prestigious research schools such as Texas, Washington & Maryland. I am content! Go Bucks!! 
A dramatic fall in one year is more evident of changing methodolgy than quality of an institution. It’s not a surprise that some schools climb in ranks when you follow which ones have gone test optional (Bowdoin), or dramatically changed their marketing plan and budget (U. Chicago) etc. I wish the rankings would just go away as they are such a source of non-information. Why do these boards give them such life? Thanks for the opportunity to vent. :((
…or a drop can be from a school not providing information.
hmmmmm…Also Tufts has fallen to 29th, even behind Wake Forest, when it has a record low 14% admit rate and increasing SATs. Perhaps a drop in peer assessments?
List is getting laughable.
The laughable list is the “best value schools” list.
To evaluate public schools they used only the OOS tuition rate.
I guess they didn’t want a list where schools like Texas AM and UAH were near the top.
Yeah weird. The yr of data for this ranking tufts was like 17 most difficult school to get into. Very strange to say the least
@bclv Tufts is ranked 57th in selectivity with N/A for top 10% ranking and SAT scores. There is also a caveat that All tufts admissions data is based on 2016 and not 2017 stats. Looks like they did not want to report admissions stats to us news and got dinged hard
Very disappointed to see Cal tied with UCLA and USC.
Stevenspr- didn’t know that. Interesting. Wonder why they did that
@Stevenspr hmmmmmm Tufts common data set does have SAT scores, 680-750 CR and 690-770 Math. Only that doesn’t have top 10% graduating class. Dunno what happened, I guess.
Ewwww, Cal has to associate with the riffraff. :-&
Schools that have been reporting better stats each year are falling. The methodology has been manipulated to get the results that USNews wants.
Here is an interesting exercise:
Go to the USNWR national university ranking, click on any university in the list, and then click on the “rankings” tab in the top banner. What pops up is a list of how well that university did relative to others in specific subfields (like business, engineering, …)
What you learn from this exercise is that there are some universities at the top of the USNWR national university ranking that don’t excel (i.e., aren’t anywhere near the best) in the subfields that USNWR itself ranks.
Of the top ten in the national university list…
Ones that do well in this exercise are: MIT, Stanford, Penn, and Caltech
Ones that do poorly in this exercise are: Harvard, Chicago, Yale, Columbia, Duke
So, USNWR actually considers some universities to be the best in the US, even though they are not particularly good in any of USNWR’s own subfields. That’s really weird, and points a problem in the national university ranking methodology.
This also just reinforces that the choice of universities for kids should reflect their interests and anticipated career choices. If you just go by what university ranks highest in the USNWR national list, you may miss the opportunity to go to a school that is “better” in what you actually want to study.
Let the hand wringing begin.
Ah, the US News rankings. A study in comparing apples to oranges.
Reed College is #82. LOL.