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<p>I knew you’d say that. Touch</p>
<p>My thoughts? While it’s always fun to see a favorite college climb in the rankings, it has no real meaning except within groupings. Smith is no different this year than it was last year.</p>
<p>My gut feeling about why Smith went down is that the economic downturn hurt it more than it did some of its peer institutions. As I understand it (and I may be dead-wrong), Smith made some difficult decisions about courses, services, and staff in order to keep supporting financially-disadvantaged students and encouraging future applications from that group.</p>
<p>I feel fairly certain that USNWR knew absolutely nothing about what is referenced above. Smith is a much better place than it was even 10 years ago, what with the engineering program, massive new science center, new poetry center, expanded language offerings, expanding international programs. Those other schools must either be doing extraordinary things to be “moving ahead” even faster. More likely, those so-called “peers” (deans, etc.) doing the peer-ranking know even less about other institutions than they used to (which isn’t very much).</p>