New USNWR rankings live now

For all of the constant CC Northeastern bashing, their acceptance rate was 5% last year and applications have risen 50% in the last few years. Their freshman retention rate is extremely high. Haters gonna hate, but they will be just fine.

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These are great rankings if you are a Pell grant recipient… since when is an education solely about social justice? Nonsense.

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There are only two UCs in the top 25. The same two UCs were in the top 25 last year.

All UCs that are in the top 40 this year, were in the top 40 last year.

UC rankings this year with last year in parenthesis.

UCLA = UC Berkeley - 15 (20)
UC San Diego - 28 (34)
UC Davis - 28 (38)
UC Irvine - 33 (34)
UC Santa Barbara - 35 (32)
UC Merced - 60 (97)
UC Riverside - 76 (89)
UC Santa Cruz - 82 (83)

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And the L still stands for that Lee… 5 points off for that!

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US News intentionally changed its formula to prop up the flagship public universities in order to sell more subscriptions. This was a BUSINESS decision and had nothing to do with social mobility (whatever that term even means).

What US News did to Tulane and Wake Forest is an absolute travesty. It’s beyond absurd to rank every single UC school ahead of top privates in other parts of the country.

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I’ll disagree.

Yes they’re there as a business. But I find it hard to believe they tested different metrics to see if their favorite schools will win.

It’s hard to rank anything but maybe Tulane and Wake were too high ? Maybe now they’re too low ? Maybe they don’t deliver near as well as their reputation related…

It just depends on the criteria but I think it’s a bit off base to say they did so purposely.

Both are known to be rich kid schools. If that hurts you then it makes sense.

Not saying the criteria is right.

If people don’t like it they should make up their own rank.

I was referring to the Washington Magazine rankings.

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They will be fine, but they have an artificially low acceptance rate because of how they calculate it across campuses and heavy marketing has pushed up their applications. Neither factor makes a compelling case that they deserve to be ranked higher or that they are an inherently better school than those who passed them.

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I abplsolutely believe US News tweaked and re-tweaked the formula repeatedly until they got the outcome they wanted.

The UC thing is ridiculous. It’s just being parochial.

And I know many Tulane and Wake grads who were middle class.

Many schools deliver.

Wake and Tulane are solid no matter what. But maybe bs others they’re not as good.

But again, they are no different than a week ago.

Bit I don’t think think there’s a conspiracy here.

The new methodology calculated them as it did.

I can’t see the full WSJ rank but neither appears in the top 50 I can see.

Where’s the outrage ?

Personally I see neither as elite but to each their own.

But there’s no conspiracies.

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Tulane was a solid top 40-50 school for the better part of 25 years. Tulane dipped briefly after Hurricane Katrina. Wake was a top 30 school for decades. Then, US News suddenly decides to change its formula and unfairly punishes both schools.

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Deleted.

Their ED acceptance rate though was @38% last year and they took a large portion of the class from those early ED rounds. The fee waivers and no supp essays have made it a particularly easy and popular app.

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I’m not denying where they were (in US News).

I’m simply saying that the formula changed and I don’t think there was a conspiracy.

There is no such thing as a top 30 or top 50. It’s made up.

You choose to believe there is…as do most.

It’s just a magazine/media company that has decided this.

It means nothing. As I noted, the schools are the same as a week ago.

Why everyone takes this as gospel I don’t know…but they do.

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The Top 5 UCs were already higher ranked than Tulane and the top 3 UCs were also higher ranked than Wake in last year’s ranking. What’s ridiculous is all the whining about a couple of schools falling down the ranks. For all the lamenting about the uselessness of these rankings, there sure is a lot of handwringing.

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While rankings are not in isolation accurate or important, I was surprised to see U Alabama ranked this low on value given conventional wisdom on CC. How does that incorporate the 3% of students who receive merit for NMF and what does it suggest for the other 97% of students?

The USNWR value rankings are based on out-of-state cost, not in-state cost. This makes many public colleges a poor value. Far more important is your cost, which is unlikely to match the cost used in the ranking calculation. For example, if you have a full ride merit scholarship to U Alabama and pay full sticker price at Ivies, Alabama may be a better value to you than Ivies; even though USNWR says Ivies cost far less than Alabama and are a far better value, in the value rankings.

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Northeastern’s strength is in their unique experiential learning and global experience programs. They are not, and have never been, a conventional college where students sit in a classroom for 4 years. They were ranked number one for co-ops, and justifiably so. As an alum of the law school, my co-ops included working for the Justice Department in D.C. and the Alaska Department of Law in Juneau.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/northeastern-u-talks-up-professional-connections-not-its-us-news-ranking/2014/09/15/12a4b3a8-3c39-11e4-9587-5dafd96295f0_story.html

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So is it all cost based or is there a quality and result component? Typically value assessments incorporate more than cost.

The USNWR formula is below. If you meant what a student should actually do, they should consider both their cost and how well colleges meet the criteria that is important to them, including things like offering a quality program in their desired major(s). The outcome of the formula below is unlikely to correlate well to this value assessment for a particular student.

  • 50% - USNWR Best College Score / Out of State Cost For Students Receiving Grant Aid
  • 20% – % Receiving Grant Aid
  • 20% – % Receiving Grant Aid / % Receiving FA (including loan aid)
  • 10% – Out of State Cost For Students Receiving Grant Aid / Sticker Price (lower i better)
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