No.
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Oh man. I guess this settles any question about whether the schools themselves care about the rankings.
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Re: Georgetown
They’ve been in the 21-25ish range for at least the past few years, if memory serves.
“Specifically, U.S. News has made significant methodological changes that reduce the emphasis on metrics that measure faculty and student quality—and that increase the emphasis on social mobility, which they measure using incomplete and misleading data.”
After noting the rise of public universities in the rankings, this sounds a bit like sour grapes.
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Imagine a student applying to vanderbilt and explaining the B on his transcript. How the teacher’s grading system in his high school was flawed and how the grade does not reflect his true knowledge in this subject.
This is similar except it is the chancellor of vanderbilt writing …
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Totally seems like sour grapes, but maybe they think their jobs are on the line???
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For sure. Gotta keep those alumni donations rolling in…
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Students typically know the grading requirements at the beginning of the class. Did US News provide a read ahead for colleges to understand the new system?
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The University of West Virginia “Challenge Accepted” banner ad at the top of the page is not aging well…
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Exactly, Seeing so many well regarded schools freak out and feel the need to put out press releases and statements makes it very clear how important they think this ranking is. They all all basically say it shouldn’t matter, then aggressively defend the reason for their position, thus completely contradicting the first sentiment.
The cool kids would have just ignored it entirely.
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And in the process validating the importance of the US News ranking! 
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And it’s not like the new factors are “privileging large public institutions” - because there are still several factors that favor elite private schools (financial resources, faculty salaries, graduation rates, etc). What’s different is they’ve tried to level the field by removing certain factors that significantly favored wealthy, private schools. This leveling makes it look unfair to the previously favored group.
This is very similar to how diversity measures in the workplace that attempt to level the field appear unfair to those used to past privileges.
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No – the score is about outcomes for the students who are admitted. Is the school or is the school not an effective vehicle for social mobility. It’s where public schools can excel, granted.
I don’t see how small class size and professors with PhDs are merely things that benefit the wealthy. Moreover, why do we care only about outcomes of certain demographics, shouldn’t we also be looking at overall outcomes?
For the purposes of US News, I guess we don’t care about impacted majors, housing shortages, or 500 plus student lectures.
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Not the webinar! Lol. 
Agree. They might have paused a beat before releasing this.
In the end, though, the degree to which people live and breathe on the basis of these infernal rankings lists is frustrating!
Indeed. There are already people here hard at work trying to invalidate their rival school’s place on this year’s ranking. I suspect some of our friends haven’t had much sleep in the last 24 hours. But never fear! They’ll come up with something to make sure everybody understands where the list went wrong for the 2024 cycle!
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And nothing at all “incomplete and misleading” about the prior method of determining supposed “student quality?” GMAB.
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That’s a bit harsh…Just do two buckets T40 and “The other guys”. It would bring new meaning to “highly rejective”.
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For the record, I didn’t come up with these factors. USNWR did, and they didn’t consult me.
As I stated in a previous comment above, no ranking system will satisfy everyone because people value different things. That’s why I said the best rankings are the ones we make ourselves, using factors and weights we care about. Because those factors and their importance are going to differ for each individual.
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There seems to be a very strong correlation between the percentage of pell grant students and the social mobility score, which isn’t a criticism, just an observation.