Acceptance rate is now below 13%, SAT/ACT scores are rising, and yet we still managed to drop a spot. Could it be due to the Nikias scandal?
And how in the world did UCLA manage to get in the T20???
College rankings make no sense to me.
(sorry for the rant, I’m just a bit confused)
U.S. News changed its methodology to become more “outcome” based (social mobility, etc)
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings describes the changes to the ranking criteria.
UCLA benefited more than USC from the newly added Pell grant student measures, since UCLA has a higher percentage of Pell grant students. However, USC is better than most highly selective private universities on the Pell grant student measures.
Note that admission rate is no longer a factor.
First of all, keep in mind that this is out of around 4200 colleges and universities, so rising or falling one slot is not exactly a big deal in the GRAND scheme of things.
Secondly, academic reputation based upon peer surveys has always been a big chunk of the U.S. News methodology, and to the extent that recent scandals have hurt USC’s reputation in recent years… they should. If I were a father and my daughter wanted to study at USC, and I then found out that the gynecologist in the student health center had been a pervert who was touching young women for years… my daughter would not be going to that school, period. There are lots of intangibles that go into choosing a particular school, and this is U.S. News’ attempt to cover those bases. A pervert in the student health center, a med school dean who does drugs with people less than half his age, athletic scandals… it’s ridiculous and can only be compartmentalized so much.
Thirdly, I’m glad to see things like social mobility being included in these rankings (hats off to Washington Monthly for shining a light on that) along with faculty salaries. USC relies on far too many adjuncts and that’s becoming a thing in higher ed, period, these days. It’s ridiculous that schools are charging $70,000 per year nowadays (it was ridiculous when it was half that much) and yet the people doing the actual teaching are often grad students or grossly underpaid adjuncts who are hired and fired from term to term and usually don’t have any health insurance. This is where the education system nowadays is just a steaming pile of bovine excrement and it’s going to be nice to see it blow up over the next generation thanks to Khan Academy and a slew of other online resources.
Students and parents reading this should also remember to take a look at Peter Thiel’s fellowships - the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who’s paying top high school students $100,000 to NOT go to college, to move to San Francisco, start a business, and self-educate online.
Ever since I started paying attention to the rankings, I’ve noticed that it’s always two steps forward, one step back for USC. Try not to lose any sleep over it. I’m still in awe that USC has made it into the top 25 at all.
When I was attending grad school at USC, the adjuncts were the best professors, since they tended to be, or had been, working professionals who knew how theory applied with reality. Too many of my full-time professors only had theoretical knowledge, and no practical experience. I would be very disappointed to learn that the adjuncts USC is using now are analogous to the part-time, hire-them-for-cheap teachers that the community colleges and CSUs have come to rely on.
USC is a good West Coast school. Whether it is better than UVA and Michigan is something debatable!
You can debate about the positions of every school on the list.
The only truly important ranking methodology is yours and your family’s. Back in 2013, when she was choosing schools to apply to, my older daughter had ranked USC initially third. She was rejected by colleges one and two, got into USC and graduated from USC in May of this year. Her and our experience with anything and everything USC changed my younger daughter’s rankings significantly. When it was her turn to rank colleges to apply to in 2016, she ranked USC #1 and thankfully also got in to USC. She is a very happy sophomore in attendance there at USC now. She got to turn down admission offers from Princeton, Rice, Emory and others along the way.
Focus on your individual wants and needs. Rely on your own extensive and exhaustive research. In our family’s case, USC is #1, and every other ranking service will forever be irrelevant. No external ranking service was going to sway my daughters’ decisions, and they should not sway yours either.
Good luck to all of this cycle’s applicants…
@WWWard: Although I am not sure about the wisdom of the decision, it took courage to turn down Princeton for USC.
Acceptance rate is no longer in their formula.
What they’ve done is to encourage colleges to make it easier for students to graduate.
@memes4life : As one without attachment to either USC or UCLA, I have always held UCLA in higher regard. This is probably due in large part to UCLA graduate programs & research.
The 30 largest research budgets:
Johns Hopkins $2,431,000,000
University of Michigan $ 1,436,000,000
University of Pennsylvania $1,296,000,000
UC-San Francisco $1,294,000,000
University of Washington $1,278,000,000
University of Wisconsin $1,158,000,000
Harvard $1,077,000
Stanford $1,066,000,000
Duke $1,056,000,000
UNC $1,045,000,000
UCLA $1,038,000,000
Cornell $974,000,000
MIT $946,000,000
Minnesota $910,000,000
Texas A&M system $893,000,000
University of Pittsburgh $890,000,000
Yale $882,000,000
Columbia $837,000,000
Penn State $826,000,000
Ohio State $818,000,000
NYU $810,000,000
University of Florida $791,000,000
Georgia Tech $791,000,000
UCal–Berkeley $774,000,000
WashUStL $741,000,000
Northwestern University $713,000,000
USC $703,000,000
Vanderbilt $641,000,000
Rutgers $630,000,000
Illinois $625,000,000
Also, USC’s endowment when broken down to “endowment per student” only places at #123 out of the 818 schools ranked.
Not to be a grouch , but USC ranking is a bit generous. The fact it tied Emory and UCB last year and UCB this year is amazing. USC has the lowest peer reputation score in the top 25 and has a lower endowment and lower avg SAT scores. They are clearly doing something right with grad rates, tried, and alumni donation. And no the whole Niakas situation happened after the ranking measures were polled and calculated. USC is a great school be proud of it, despite any flaws it may have.
You shouldn’t really take college rankings as a solid thing. There’s also the niche rankings and they often give pretty different rankings. The point? There’s no easy way to rank colleges. You could take earnings after graduation or unemployment rates one year after graduation, but it gets to a point where you have many schools that all have great numbers and no matter where you go in that top 30 or top 40, you’re gonna do pretty well compared the majority of colleges (so long as you choose a useful degree). At that point, it’s really how you personally would rank these schools. It’s not like a sport where you can actually have these schools compete in their overal academics and success after graduation. It’s like having the MLB but no one plays each other and you have to rank based on how well practices went.
Well if the rankings are based solely on cheerleader outfits, then USC is the new Princeton.
Here’s a breakdown in the changes to the U.S. News formula:
USC is 17th in the new Wall Street Journal / Times Higher Education U.S. college rankings:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/explore-the-full-wsj-the-college-rankings-1536187754
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/wsj-the-us-college-rankings-2019-harvard-holds-top-spot
If anyone has a longer list of the rankings that isn’t behind a pay wall, I’d appreiciate it. Not subscribing to the WSJ right now… too many other subscriptions.
WSJ/Times Higher Education Best College 2019 Rankings - Top 100.
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
41(tie) UC Davis
41(tie) Smith College
43 Purdue University West Lafayatte
44 Bowdoin College
45 UC San Diego
46 Wesleyan University
47 University of Miami
48(tie) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain
48(tie) Lihigh University
50 Byrn Mawr College
51(tie) University of Rochester
51(tie) University of Virginia
53(tie) Colgate University
53(tie) University of Richmond
55 George Washington University
56 Tulane University
57 Davidson College
58 United States Military Academy
59 Barnard College
60(tie) Gerogia Institute of Technology
60(tie) University of Washington Seattle
62(tie) University of Texas Austin
62(tie) Wake Forest University
64 Buckness University
65 Mount Holyoke College
66 University of Wisconsin Madison
67(tie) Boston College
67(tie) Hamillton College
69 Northeasten University
70 Lafayette College
71 Colby College
72 Vassar College
73 University of Florida
74 Drexel University
75 Washington and Lee University
76 Grinnell College
77 Bakes College
78 Brandeis University
79 Oberlin College
80 University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Campus
81 University of Maryland College Park
82 Franklin and Marshall College
83(tie) UC Santa Barbara
83(tie) Densison University
83(tie) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
83(tie) Scripps College
87(tie) Rhode Island School of Design
88(tie) William and Mary
89 Macalester College
90 Michigan State University
91 College of Holy Cross
92 Connecticut College
93 Union College
94(tie) Occidential College
94(tie) Ohio State University
94(tie) Texas A&M University College Station
97 University of Connecticut
98 Worcester Polytechnic Institute
99 UC Irvine
100(tie) Gettyburg College
100(tie) Southern Methodist University
100(tie) Trinity University
LOL. Rising or dropping one slot on the rank is statistically meaningless. This is a non-issue. And what’s confusing about UCLA being in the top 20? It’s been there before, has consistently (as in for decades) been in the top 25 or so even when USC was well below it and is the school that gets more applications than any other in the country. Sounds like someone is a bit too status sensitive.
College Niche ranks USC #20 in “Best Colleges in America”. IMO, it has come a long way since the early 1990’s when I was graduating college and at the time it was considered the university of spoiled children. A great college, albeit, very expensive…
As others have explained, it’s all about methodology and inputs. If those change, the rankings change. It’s not as though USC has become worse.