Not sure you can say the algorithm is changed each year to keep the rankings the same. USNews has made adjustments over time to actual reduce the weighting on the reputational score. The rankings are otherwise data based using the same metrics that are reported in the common data sets. The other rankings are much more subjective and less data based. Things like student to faculty ratios can be verified in the CDS.
However, determining the weighting and use of the objective data is itself a subjective process on the part of USNWR.
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You liked @itsallgood123, agreeing with me, but agree with @merc81 disagreeing.
not really. i truly did not understand your comment.
IMHO, USNews is pretty worthless because they build their OVERALL rankings on an assortment of things which arenât applicable across colleges. In addition, like any data set they have to decide how much each thing is weighted. I donât agree with how they built their model. So the overall outcome is worth 0 to me.
I do find their data useful if one is comparing just a single factor. So if I wanted to look at data for individual things I would use their data for a single thing. For example my kid might want to know something and Iâd look at that data point across schools. Could be useful.
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The USNWR rankings are useful for one thing: telling you where a college stands in âconventional prestige wisdomâ (whether or not you agree with that). Are the USNWR rankings intended to reverse-engineer âconventional prestige wisdomâ?
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Yes, conventional prestige isnât something weâre interested in.
The key question for a long time was whether it was reflecting conventional wisdom or creating conventional wisdom. Iâd say neither at this point.
Here is the problem. My daughter is heading to U Miami. 3-5 years ago the school was 30 something. And then they changed the formula and it was out of the top 50. And this year, it made the top 50 and I was relieved.
It is still the same school. Not much has changed. The USN criteria still does not match hers or mine. But, because I am a product of the US News phenomenon of the past - I still care. It had little influence on her applying, but I was happy it got back into the top 50.
Has it become anything more than a best pizza in NY list?
The only thing I object to about that question is its use of the active verb. USN was always a best pizza in NY list.
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I understand why you felt worried, then relieved about the rankings seesaw. I wonder if you really understand why your feelings about UMiami were so viscerally tied to the USNWR ranking?
On one hand (by joking about the list being akin to a âbest pizzaâ list) you agree the list is interesting but maybe not necessarily accurate, and seem to want to not depend on it. On the other hand, you mentioned the rankings drop as a âproblemâ and indicate you arenât quite ready to discard your respect for the list because ⊠hey, your student is going to a top50 school (at least for this year, who knows where UMiami will rank next year) and that must say something about something right?
Really, I get it - I was there at one time. But itâs probably worth some time to think about how you really feel about it.
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The USN rankings had close to 0 influence on where she applied, but⊠I grew up using that list as my college bible, waiting for each new edition to come out. My knowledgable side cared 0, but emotionally, it still has some meaning. Even here, smart people mention that list because they do not know of a better one.
To be fair, I love when my favorite restaurant gets mentioned on a best of list. It feels good, but unfortunately brings the âme-tooâ crowd to take up all the tables for 3 months or so.
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It might be worth noting that, even without differing methodologies, seemingly large changes in a schoolâs rank may be expected to occur relatively frequently in the denser portions of the distribution curve. For example, the same difference in overall score separating the 13th and 14th ranked schools in the National Universities category suffices to separate the 49th and 63rd ranked schools deeper in the ranking.
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I donât. Move the conversation forward. The threads are not the place for spats.
@EconPop: If you have a particular interest in Elon, you may want to see this topic that remarks on its dramatic rise in student profile over several decades:
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The original USNWR ranking was based 100% of Ranking Based on âacademicsâ questionnaire. It had the following order.
Original USNWR Ranking with 100% Based on âAcademicsâ Questionnaire
1 . Stanford
2. Harvard
3. Yale
4. Princeton
5. UC Berkeley
After people complained about the validity of basing ratings entirely on a questionnaire, USNWR added a lot of numbers with varied weightings, which made the ranking look more scientific to some. This resulted in a large change in weight of âreputationâ score category from 100% to 25%, and the following ranking order. In the decades since then, the USNWR âreputationâ score has had far more moderate changes in weighting. The bigger change was removing the HS survey component to the âreputationâ and instead only relying on the âacademicsâ distinguished/marginal questionnaire.
Modified Ranking with Additional Weighted Categories Beyond Just Questionnaire
1 . Yale
2. Princeton
3. Caltech
4. Harvard
5. MIT
âŠ
24. UC Berkeley
There are many other rankings criteria besides âreputationâ that are not found in the CDS including financial resources per student (10%), average faculty salary (7%), alumni giving (3%), etc.
All of the rankings use arbitrary weightings of various criteria, but USNWR does not appear to be more based on objective data than most others. Some are based 100% on objective data rather than subjective surveys of opinion. For example Washingtonâs Monthlyâs methodology is described at A Note on Methodology: 4-year Colleges and Universities | Washington Monthly . Skimming through, I didnât see any surveys/questionnaires in the weightings.
However, using objective data instead of surveys doesnât mean Washington Monthly is more valid than USNWR. Itâs still completely arbitrary and can easily be made to have a wide variety of different colleges do well, depending on what specific weightings and objective criteria are used. For example, Washington Monthlyâs rankings in a previous recent year were as follows. The traditional HYPSM names did poorly in the social mobility and service categories, which pulled down their ranking.
Old Washington Monthly Rankings
1 . UC San Diego
2. UC Riverside
3. Texas A&M
4. Case Western
5. UC Berkeley
After extreme criticism on this site and elsewhere about having unexpected college names rank on top, Washington Monthly went so far as to remove the record of their old public-heavy ratings from their website, and changed their weightings to get a result more similar to USNWR and others, with HYPSM on top. The current WM top 5 are:
New Washington Monthly Rankings, with Modified Weightings
1 . Stanford
2. Harvard
3. MIT
4. Princeton
5. Yale
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Regarding UMiami, you can go to their website and see their Common Data set information for the past several years, review the data and see if there are any trends to suggest larger issues? The rankings just reflect the data generally so its better to actual do the research on the school itself, check the application numbers over the past 5 years, the faculty to student ratio, student retention rate, etc. You can see if the numbers are going the wrong direction.
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Although OP asked about colleges, US News rankings are very significant with respect to law schools & future employment in the nationâs largest law firmsâeven for experienced attorneys.
The most lenient job posting for an experienced attorney in biglaw (law firms of 500 or more attorneys) specified that one must have a law degree from a âtop tierâ (top 50 out of 202 law schools) law school. But, this was a rare sighting.
Iâd be lying if I didnât acknowledge that US News (and other) rankings were part of the calculus for us, but only as an initial threshold consideration. As an example, when my older daughter started making clear in 2018 that the University of Florida was one of her top choices, my initial thought was that it was just another big SEC football school. Our support and agreement with her final decision to attend UF was the result of considerably more in-depth research, but it was also influenced initially by the schoolâs high US News ranking.
One big problem is that is todayâs world of specialization, with so many schools requiring applicants to pick a major or college within the university when they apply, overall rankings are far less significant than reputations and resources of individual majors and departments. My younger daughter is currently weighing acceptances at a handful of schools in the 40-60 range in the US News rankings. Sheâs also been deferred at a top 20 school. but I doubt that she will want to go there even if accepted, because they donât really have the specific program sheâs looking for. The same was true of my older daughter. She wanted to major in marine sciences, but my wife was adamant that she should go to Harvard if accepted, even though they donât offer that concentration. Thankfully, the wise folks in Harvard admissions rendered that issue moot and sheâs very happy at UF, which has facilities and expertise in marine sciences that none of the top ranked private colleges she considered can match.
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Because USNWR sets up their methodology to keep certain colleges on top, what the score indicates is how similar a college is to USNWRâs favorite universities. This doesnât change much from year to year. If Williams is on on top itâs because it is likely one of the LACs which is most similar to USNWRâs favorite universities.
It is not by chance that the highest ranked LACs are those which are often called âthe Little Iviesâ.
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