<p>Are you familiar with US News top 25 national universities? Starting from 1983, USNews began to rank Americas best colleges on their August or September issues, with exception of 1984, 1986, and 1987. They did not explain why the rankings were not provided for those years. For the first two rankings, published in 1983 and 1985, each included a list of 10 universities (top 10). Starting from 1988, the list was expanded to 25 universities (top 25). Since its inception in 1983, the orders of top 25 schools varied year by year, which makes the annual event so exiting and dynamic. </p>
<p>To observe the dynamics of the top 25 schools, I subdivided the USNews rankings into three periods:</p>
<p>First periods fell between 1983 and 1989(Y1980s),
Second periods between 1990 and 1999(Y1990s), and
Third periods between 2000 and 2009(Y2000s);
And then averaged them to obtain Rank1980s, Rank1990s, and Rank2000s (see the following tables for details).</p>
<p>Summary of findings:</p>
<p>Top 5 </p>
<ol>
<li> Y1980s: YSHPChicagoDuke or SYHPDukeChicago. Yale tied with Stanford at the top; followed by Harvard and Princeton; and Chicago tied with Duke at number 5.</li>
<li> Y1990s: HYPSM or HPYSM. Harvard out-completed Yale and Stanford at the top, followed by a two-way tie of Yale and Princeton at number 2, Stanford at number 4, and MIT which rose from number 7 from Y1980s to replace Chicago and Duke at number 5.</li>
<li> Y2000s: PHYMSCalTech. Princeton out-raced Harvard at the top, followed by Harvard, Yale and MIT, and a two-way tie at number 5 between Stanford and CalTech which ranked at 14 and 7 for Y1980s and Y1990s. </li>
</ol>
<p>Top 10 </p>
<ol>
<li> Universities ranked among top10 for all three periods are: HYPSM, Duke, and Dartmouth (7 in total). </li>
<li> Universities ranked among top10 for at least once of the three periods are: HYPSM, Duke, Dartmouth, CalTech, Columbia, Chicago, Penn, Brown, and Berkeley (13 in total). </li>
</ol>
<p>Top 25 </p>
<ol>
<li> Universities ranked among top25 for all three periods are: HYPSM, Duke, Dartmouth, CalTech, Columbia, Chicago, Penn, Brown, Berkeley, Cornell, Rice, UVA, JHU, Northwestern, Notre Dame, CMU, Michigan, and Georgetown (22 in total).</li>
<li> Universities ranked among top25 for at least once of the three periods are: HYPSM, Duke, Dartmouth, CalTech, Columbia, Chicago, Penn, Brown, Berkeley, Cornell, Rice, UVA, JHU, Northwestern, Notre Dame, CMU, Michigan, Georgetown, WUSL, UNC, Emory, Vanderbilt, Wisconsin, UIUC (28 in total). </li>
</ol>
<p>Rank1980s
Universities 1983-1989
1 Yale University 2.25
1 Stanford University 2.25
3 Harvard University 2.5
4 Princeton University 3.5
5 University of Chicago 7.25
5 Duke University 7.75
7 Dartmouth College 8.25
8 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 9
9 Brown University 9.25
10 University of California at Berkeley 10.25
11 Cornell University 10.75
12 University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 12
13 Rice University 12.75
14 California Institute of Technology 13
14 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 13
16 Johns Hopkins University 14.75
17 Columbia University 15.5
18 University of Virginia 16.25
19 Northwestern University 16.75
19 Carnegie Mellon University 16.75
21 Georgetown University 17
22 University of Pennsylvania 18
22 University of Notre Dame 18
24 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 18.75
25 University of Wisconsin at Madison 20.5
26 University of California at Los Angeles 21
27 Washington University in St. Louis 22
28 College of William and Mary 23.5
29 Emory University 24.25</p>
<p>Rank1990s
Universities 1990-1999
1 Harvard University 1.4
2 Yale University 2.2
2 Princeton University 2.2
4 Stanford University 4.5
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5.2
6 Duke University 5.8
7 California Institute of Technology 6.4
8 Dartmouth College 7.8
9 Columbia University 10.5
10 University of Chicago 10.9
11 Cornell University 11.5
12 Brown University 12.1
13 University of Pennsylvania 12.5
14 Northwestern University 13.7
15 Johns Hopkins University 14.5
16 Rice University 14.6
17 Emory University 18.9
18 Washington University in St. Louis 19.2
19 University of California at Berkeley 19.8
20 University of Virginia 20.3
21 Georgetown University 20.7
22 Vanderbilt University 20.9
23 University of Notre Dame 21.1
24 University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 22.4
25 Carnegie Mellon University 23
26 University of California at Los Angeles 23.8
27 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 24.4
28 Tufts University 24.5</p>
<p>Rank2000s
Universities 2000-2009
1 Princeton University 1.4
2 Harvard University 1.5
3 Yale University 2.8
4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4.5
5 California Institute of Technology 4.7
5 Stanford University 4.7
7 University of Pennsylvania 5.2
8 Duke University 6.6
9 Columbia University 9.3
10 Dartmouth College 9.6
11 University of Chicago 11.1
12 Northwestern University 12.1
13 Washington University in St. Louis 12.5
14 Cornell University 13.1
15 Johns Hopkins University 13.9
16 Brown University 15.4
17 Rice University 15.5
18 Emory University 18.3
19 University of Notre Dame 19
20 Vanderbilt University 19.2
21 University of California at Berkeley 20.5
22 Carnegie Mellon University 22.1
23 University of Virginia 22.6
24 Georgetown University 23.2
25 University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 24.9
26 University of California at Los Angeles 25.2</p>