<p>It's from 2000, but highlights what i think US us news's most despicable practice : selectively standardizing or not standardizing data. Take a look towards the bottom at what happened when they decided to be fair in 1999 and Caltech was #1. The more people are aware of these practices, the more of a chance I hope there is that US News will tweak their methodology to be statistically valid, which right now, it isn't.</p>
<p>Yeah, there's even some obvious statistical problems with it right now. For instance, supposedly, acceptance rate, SAT midrange, and % of students who were in their high school's top 10% are the only factors taken into consideration for the selectivity ranking (which in turn contributes to the overall score). However, if those are the only 3 factors being considered for that category, how is Georgetown ranked 19th for selectivity whereas Cornell is ranked 15th for selectivity when, according to U.S. News's data, Georgetown has a better SAT midrange, a lower acceptance rate, and the same % of students who were in their high school's top 10%?</p>
<p>^One Word: Magic</p>
<p>I think it's a matter of time until a school sues US News for slander because it uses unfair ranking to keep good non Ivy type schools suppressed. The school would have to prove is damage coupled with intentionally using unfair methodologies. Both of these would be quite provable.</p>
<p>Who's to say what is 'fair', though? It clearly isn't an objective thing or else USNWR wouldn't be changing the weightings or categories themselves.</p>
<p>And I always harp on this, but why not, since no media ever did: a few years ago, almost 88% of the colleges in the Top 120 who saw a change in their PA score over the previous year saw a DROP. </p>
<p>This defies logic--scores may change over time, even year to year, but there should be change in both directions. Some should go up, some should go down. Unless you want to believe the surveys all came to the respondents when they were feeling more critical than usual. Schools found it suspicious and asked USNews about it.</p>
<p>USNews never, to my knowledge, came up with an satisfactory answer as to why this happened.</p>