It’s all in the delivery. 
Agree. And the best approach is continue to work hard and climb up back, instead of explaining …
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This alone is enough of a reason for the Heels/Gamecocks football game to continue into perpetuity.
They could make it a trophy game: The Battle for Carolina
The trophy (whatever shape it is…) would be painted half Carolina blue, half garnet.
To the winner go the spoils: they get to refer to themselves as “Carolina” the following year.
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I think Vandy is pissed because they have spent a lot of time and money over the past five years or so trying to increase their diversity and giving generous no loan and merit aid only to lose six spots in the rankings because US News has decided to focus on pell grant eligibility and first Gen over URMs. Similarly, Hopkins has radically increased their diversity over the past decade, eliminating legacy admissions and also giving generous no loan aid. Their current freshman class has the highest percentage of black and Hispanic students of any highly selective school other than Cal Tech (current freshman class 34 percent URM and 17 percent white). https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/08/29/john-hopkins-legacy-racial-diversity/ They fell two spots in this year’s ranking.
Part of the reason the UCs have lots of pell eligible students is that they were forbidden to use race in admissions years ago and that is the obvious substitute for maintaining diversity.
I’m sure it’s frustrating to schools to be told now the metric for diversity is shifted ro pell eligible and first gen, and statistics from nearly a decade ago will be used to evaluate their success on this new metric.
I
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USNWR can’t bear the full burden for that change. Their shift in that metric seems to be aimed at adapting to the Supreme Court AA decision,
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I have not followed this USNWR ranking issue that closely, but I am confused because I just read the article that you linked (gift link below) and it seems like JHU has also sharply increased the number of Pell Grant students it is enrolling --increased the number at a higher rate than many of its competitors. So if it is not about numbers of Pell eligible students, is the fall in rank due to the outcomes of those Pell grant alums or old data or something else?
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They actually finalized their methodology before the Supreme Court decision was released. It makes sense that the metric would change in the future, it just seems odd to change it so quickly and then to use data that’s more than five years old to evaluate it.
The most recent data used was apparently from 2016 according to other posts in this thread. Since Hopkins began this effort in 2013, probably would not see an effect on graduation rates until 2018 or so.
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I am sure they did change it ahead of the decision because it was a decision that was widely expected.
Thanks for the gift link.
JHU, of course, has an enormous hospital system and may have had some undergraduate resource financial numbers disallowed, as Vanderbilt described in its complaint letter.
“We would be nowhere near the top of the ranking if not for the countless accomplishments of Danny Cole. The rest of the student body has essentially given up,” said Dean of Assessments Gordon Pritchard in an emailed statement."
That is really funny.
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Tuesday, a crowd of nearly 2400 undergraduates congregated at Cannon Green to protest the senior thesis requirement, a long-standing curricular tradition.
“I mean, like, by now all the cool topics have already been done. I wanted to write about socks, but someone already wrote about them a few years ago. So we have had it! Down with the thesis!” proclaimed Ursulus Brickenstein, '25.
Fellow protestors chanted “Down with the thesis! Tear it to pieces!”
Our future leaders. 
USNWR did not previously give a bonus for higher URM %. The current weightings continue to give a boost for no loan aid. There was little change relating to Pell components. The specific changes were as follows. I am ordering from highest to lowest delta change in weightings. By far the biggest % change was removing the 8% class size weighting. I suspect this relates to Columbia being caught lying about class size and numerous other colleges gaming the class size.
- Class Size – Previously 8%, Now 0%
- % of Grads Earning >$32k – Previously 0%, Now 5%
- SAT/ACT Score if <50% Submit – Previously 5%, Now 0%
- 6-Year Grad Rate if <50% Submit Scores – Previously 17.6%. Now 21%
- Faculty Terminal % – Previously 3%, Now 0%
- Alumni Giving – Previously 3%, Now 0%
- First Gen Grad Rate – Previously 0%, Now 2.5%
- First Gen Grad Rate Performance – Previously 0%, Now 2.5%
- Graduation Rate Performance – Previously 8%, Now 10%
- High School Rank – Previously 2%, Now 0%
- Borrower Debt – Previously 3%, Now 5%
- Proportion Borrowing – Previously 2%, Now 0%
- Student Faculty Ratio – Previously 1%, Now 3%
- Financial Resources per Student – Previously 10%, Now 8%
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I didn’t say it was previously part of the formula, I just don’t think schools that have dedicated millions to increasing diversity, because they believed it the right thing to do, were happy to find their ranking nevertheless suffered with the new “social mobility” factors.
If they truly believe increasing diversity is the right thing to do then that should be a good enough reason in itself. They shouldn’t need USNWR to give them bonus points.
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What are these new social mobility factors? As noted the Pell % had little change. Do you mean the low 2.5% weighting on first gen graduation rate and first gen graduate rate performance? These are correlated with Vanderbilt’s improved grant aid that you mentioned. Kids who don’t have to leave the college for financial reasons are more likely to graduate. I haven’t seen stats on Vanderbilt’s first generation graduation rate, but I expect it is quite high. I doubt this is the primary reason why Vanderbilt had a decrease in ranking. Vanderbilt’s social mobility ranking is not good, but it’s on par with many other selective privates. Some specific numbers are below;
Cornell – #194
Vanderbilt – #222
Dartmouth – #233
Georgetown – #245
Chicago – #293
WUSTL – #318
If you are referring to Vanderbilt’s statement, I don’t think “Vanderbilt pissed because they have spent a lot of time and money over the past five years or so trying to increase their diversity and giving generous no loan and merit aid only to lose six spots in the ranking.” The first gen stats above are based on students who started in 2011, well before 5 years ago, As noted URM diversity impact on USNWR has not changed, and grant aid probably has a greater positive impact than in the past, due the increased focus on graduation rate.
I think instead, Vanderbilt’s statement is primarily for PR. Vanderbilt probably thinks USNWR ranking is as arbitrary and useless as I do, but it still impacts them. When Vanderbilt slides in ranking alumni, students, parents and others complain. Applications decrease, as do donations. A decrease in rankings has notable negative impact for the college, and Vanderbilt wants to do all they can to mitigate that negative impact. One such strategy is to issue a public statement that criticizes the rankings, including criticizing components that did not have a large impact on their decrease.
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While the total percentages for the Pell categories didn’t change much, how the Pell categories were calculated changed a lot, and USNWR itself says this caused low-Pell schools to take a hit:
“Even with this change, the increased weight placed on social mobility factors, among other revisions to this year’s rankings formula, tended to benefit schools that enrolled more Pell Grant students than their closely ranked peers.”
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/ranking-criteria-and-weights
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The comment you quoted relates to USNWR decreasing the emphasis on % Pell in Pell Graduation Rate stats. They previously multiplied by % Pell, now the sum. For example, suppose you have 2 colleges:
College A – 80% grad rate, 20% Pell
College B – 90% grad rate, 10% Pell
In last year’s ranking, College A would be favored – 80% * 20% = 16% > 90% * 10% = 9%. However, in this year’s rankings; the 2 colleges would be equal – 80% + 20% = 90% + 10%. The change from multiplying to adding favors colleges with a lower % Pell, like college B.
In order to avoid criticism for favoring low % Pell colleges, USNWR added the statement you quoted, saying that even though the Pell grad rate stats were changed to favor low % Pell colleges, the overall changes tend to favor higher % Pell.
Saying USNWR favors higher % Pell sounds good for PR, but it isn’t necessarily an accurate statement. To evaluate whether the USNWR statement is reasonably accurate or not, I’ll look at highly selective privates with especially high percent Pell and review have rankings have changed. According to USNWR, the following highly ranked private colleges have a highest and lowest % Pell among previously top 25 type schools. I don’t see much pattern. Perhaps USNWR instead means that quite a few public colleges improved, as others have noted.
USNWR Ranking Change for High % Pell, Selective Private Colleges
Columbia – 23% (increased 6)
Johns Hopkins – 21% (decreased 2)
Northwestern – 20% (decreased 1)
Harvard / Princeton / Stanford – 19% (no change)
USNWR Ranking Change for Low % Pell, Selective Private Colleges
Georgetown – 11% (no change)
Duke – 12% (increased 3)
Notre Dame – 13% (decreased 2)
Brown – 14% (increased 4)
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Such things change slowly over time. Grad rates might improve a point or two in a good year. Also everyone is in the same boat. It’s how you are doing relative to your peers.