Comparing WSJ/THE and US NEWS College Rankings methodologies

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**New U.S. News methodology **-- https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
The rankings evaluate colleges and universities on 16 measures of academic quality. They allow you to compare at a glance the relative quality of U.S. institutions based on such widely accepted indicators of excellence as first-year student retention, graduation rates and the strength of the faculty. And as you check out colleges already on your short list, you may discover unfamiliar schools with similar metrics and thus broaden your options.

**WSJ/THE methodology** -- <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/wall-street-journal-times-higher-education-college-rankings-2019-methodology?mod=article_inline">https://www.timeshighereducation.com/wall-street-journal-times-higher-education-college-rankings-2019-methodology?mod=article_inline</a>
The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Ranking is a pioneering ranking of US colleges and universities that puts student success and learning – based on around 200,000 current student voices – at its heart.
The ranking includes clear performance indicators designed to answer the questions that matter the most to students and their families when making one of the most important decisions of their lives – who to trust with their education. Does the college have sufficient resources to teach me properly? Will I be engaged, and challenged, by my teacher and classmates? Does the college have a good academic reputation? What type of campus community is there? How likely am I to graduate, pay off my loans and get a good job?
The ranking includes the results of the THE US Student Survey, which examines a range of key issues including students’ engagement with their studies, their interaction with their teachers and their satisfaction with their experience.
The ranking adopts a balanced scorecard approach, with 15 individual performance indicators combining to create an overall score that reflects the broad strength of the institution.

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From WSJ – What the WSJ/THE College Rankings Measure—and Why They Are Different (https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-the-wsj-the-college-rankings-measureand-why-they-are-different-1536188749)

The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings are now in their third year, and their guiding principles remain unchanged: We look at schools the way parents and prospective students do. We consider the factors most important to them.
So we continue to put the greatest emphasis on two crucial factors: the outcomes students can expect from their college education and the resources schools deploy on academics. We also consider the quality of teaching and level of engagement students have with their school, as determined in large part by an extensive student survey. And we look at the diversity of the learning environment.
…

From US News –
Outcomes (35 percent, up from 30 percent in 2018) – We approach outcomes from angles of social mobility (5 percent), graduation and retention (22 percent), and graduation rate performance (8 percent).
Faculty Resources (20 percent) – Class size, 8 percent; Faculty salary, 7 percent; proportion of full-time faculty with the highest degree in their fields (3 percent), student-faculty ratio (1 percent) and the proportion of faculty who are full time (1 percent).
Expert Opinion (20 percent, down from 22.5 percent in 2018) – The peer assessment survey averages results from spring 2017 and 2018. It is weighted at 15 percent for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges; 20 percent for Regional Universities and Colleges (down from 22.5 percent in 2018). Of the 4,589 academics who were sent questionnaires, 35.5 percent responded. This response rate is down from the 40.4 percent response rate in spring 2017 and the 39 percent response rate to the surveys conducted in spring 2016.
The high school counselor assessment survey averages results from spring 2016, 2017 and 2018. It is weighted at 5 percent (down from 7.5 percent in 2018) and only applies toward National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges.
Financial Resources (10 percent)
Student Excellence (10 percent, down from 12.5 percent in 2018)
Alumni Giving (5 percent)

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US News over a period of time has tweaked their ranking methodology to address the indicators that most impact the decision making by the prospective students and their parents. The WSJ/THE College ranking, in my opinion, is a reasonably representative ranking and most likely, it will become popular soon!

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In case you don’t have access to WSJ, here is the WSJ/THE 2019 top 40 list (see 2018 list at https://www.timeshighereducation.com/rankings/united-states/2018#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats)

Rank/ School
1 Harvard University
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3 Yale University
4 Columbia University
5 California Institute of Technology
6 Stanford University
7(tie) Brown University
7(tie) Duke University
9 Princeton University

10 University of Pennsylvania

11 Cornell University
12 Dartmouth College
13 Northwestern University
14 University of Chicago
15 Rice University
16 Carnegie Mellon University
17 University of Southern California
18 Washington University in St Louis
19 Vanderbilt University

20 Emory University

21 Johns Hopkins University
22 Amherst College
23 Williams College
24 Pomona College
25 University of California, Los Angeles
26 University of Notre Dame
27 New York University
28 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
29 Wellesley College

30 Georgetown University

31 Swarthmore College
32 Tufts University
33(tie) University of California, Berkeley
33(tie) Claremont McKenna College
35 Carleton College
36 Boston University
37(tie) Middlebury College
37(tie) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
39(tie) Case Western Reserve University
39(tie) Haverford College

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U.S. News’s “Expert Opinion (20 percent, down from 22.5 percent in 2018)” surveyed nearly 24,400 counselors at public, private and parochial high schools. but the high school counselor assessment survey is weighted at only 5 percent (down from 7.5 percent in 2018) while the peer assessment survey is weighted at much higher 15 percent for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges; 20 percent for Regional Universities and Colleges (down from 22.5 percent in 2018). Of the 4,589 academics who were sent questionnaires, only 35.5 percent responded. This response rate is down from the 40.4 percent response rate in spring 2017 and the 39 percent response rate to the surveys conducted in spring 2016.

WSJ/THE’s “Engagement (20%)” replaces U.S. News’s “Expert Opinion (20%)”.
Decades of research has found that the best way to truly understand teaching quality at an institution – how well it manages to inform, inspire and challenge students – is through capturing what is known as “student engagement”. This was described by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker in 2011 as “the extent to which students immerse themselves in the intellectual and social life of their college – and a major component of engagement is the quality of a student’s contacts with faculty”.
WSJ/THE has captured student engagement across the US through its US Student Survey, carried out in partnership with two leading market research providers. For 2017 and 2018, we gathered the views of almost 200,000 current college and university students on a range of issues relating directly to their experience at college.
Students answer 12 core questions about their experience that are either multiple choice or on a scale from zero to 10, and also provide background information about themselves. The survey was conducted online and respondents were recruited by research firm Streetbees using social media, facilitated, in part, by student representatives at individual schools. We also worked with participating institutions who distributed the survey to random samples of their own students. Respondents were verified as students of their reported college using their email address. We used an aggregated group of respondents from both years (2017 and 2018 surveys). At least 50 responses in the 2018 survey were required for a university to be included.

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WSJ/THE 2019 41-80 list

41  University of California, Davis
41  Smith College
43  Purdue University West Lafayette
44  Bowdoin College
45  University of California, San Diego
46  Wesleyan University
47  University of Miami
48  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
48  Lehigh University

<h1>50  Bryn Mawr College</h1>

51  University of Rochester
51  University of Virginia
53  Colgate University
53  University of Richmond
55  George Washington University
56  Tulane University
57  Davidson College
58  United States Military Academy
59  Barnard College

<h1>60  Georgia Institute of Technology</h1>

60  University of Washington-Seattle
62  University of Texas at Austin
62  Wake Forest University
64  Bucknell University
65  Mount Holyoke College
66  University of Wisconsin-Madison
67  Boston College
67  Hamilton College
69  Northeastern University

<h1>70  Lafayette College</h1>

71  Colby College
72  Vassar College
73  University of Florida
74  Drexel University
75  Washington and Lee University
76  Grinnell College
77  Bates College
78  Brandeis University
79  Oberlin College
80  University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh campus