<p>US News lists my son's school, Gannon Univ., as one of nine up-and-coming schools under the Master's North category. Well, then why has it dropped 11 places since my 2007 edition was published?</p>
<p>^^^I just hope he didn’t attend there because of a ranking it received from USNWR!</p>
<p>^ USNew rankings is all about “brand name” and it’s pretty much like a beauty pageant that is heavily skewed towards wealthy private institutions with deep pockets like HYPSM. lol</p>
<p>I take USNWR with a grain of salt when it comes time to evaluate real indicators of academic quality…</p>
<p>No, but US News was one tool we used. People just need to realize how arbitrary these rating can be so they don’t rely on them.</p>
<p>Good point toledo. I hope others will read this thread as well.</p>
<p>Have to be pretty naive to take USNWR seriously.</p>
<p>I only use US news as a database, to recheck if I forgot any universities I might want to check out. Don’t even remember their ■■■■■■■■ numbers.</p>
<p>after reading the thread with 500++ posts discussing the new USNews college ranks, I found this thread really makes more sense to me than that one.</p>
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<p>Because if the rankings never changed, who’d buy the newer editions? This is just one more indication of how bogus the whole ranking concept is.</p>
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The USN&WR rankings are of limited value, but they are not random. They are derived by a numerical calculation, and USN&WR provides both the numbers and the system used to calculate with them. So if you compare the 2007 numbers to the 2009 numbers, you should be able to figure exactly what factor (or factors) caused your school to drop relative to its peers.</p>
<p>One inherent problem with the USN&WR system is that many of the schools in the lower part of the “Top Tier” have very similar or identical scores. So there are a lot of ties or near-ties, which means that the loss or gain of even a single point can cause a school to jump several places in the standings. It’s quite possible that your school dropped by several places due to relatively small changes in the factors that USN&WR looks at. </p>
<p>Is this meaningful? No, because it doesn’t make sense to make fine distinctions between schools that are basically equivalent. USN&WR tacitly admits it by not attempting to rank schools within “Tier 3” and “Tier 4”. But USN&WR continues to make fine distinctions between schools in the “Top Tier,” because of the interest that this generates…</p>
<p>I think in practical terms that Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges is a much better guide to colleges where they group colleges into various categories such as Most Competitive, Highly Competitive, Very Competitive, Competitive, etc. It is too bad that they don’t publish this data on the Internet. Big mistake on their part. That is why US News rankings are also so widely used. You can see them for free on-line.</p>
<p>Well, considering the fact that Miami of Ohio dropped 13 places for the h*ll of it from last year to this year, I can say this stuff happens. Still, they had basically the same stats as the previous year, and also got an additional boost by being ranked in the top 20 national Uni’s for undergraduate education.</p>
<p>When it comes to USNWR’s previous editions, I would say yes, they are somewhat credible and reliable. But with 4 schools tied for #4, significant kiss-a**age to top non-ivy privates like Vandy and Emory, and a uncalled for drop of many publics, including Miami and SUNY-Bing, all I have to say is W T F ???</p>
<p>The private Uni’s will be hurting after the recession, though. Maybe that’s why they did it.</p>