And my point is - #12 vs #9 (which it was last year, I think) is meaningless. It’s a great school and 3 ranks up or down shouldn’t matter. There’s no magical cut off between the “Top 10” (as defined by USNWR) and the rest.
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Tufts and Wake were never top tier but 40 and 47 is egregious. They both should be 31-35.
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I don’t have the unlocked version for this edition, but as I recall that is right around where their peer reputation scores would usually land them.
So it depends on what you assume is a baseline, but I agree that doesn’t seem that far off.
It was 6 last year not 9. It dropped 6 spots.
I agree, Chicago is definitely T10 based on academic rigor and research.
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Nevertheless, I am confident that those who value Chicago’s academic quality and strengths will apply. And those who don’t because it’s not “T10” don’t know what they’re doing.
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Of course this is true for the universities too, just not to the same extreme as LACs. But your experience at Rochester and TAMU, say, are still likely to be quite different, even though this edition has them tied at #47.
When you think about this seriously, it quickly becomes obvious this whole project makes zero sense. The dominant characteristic of the US college system, what really sets us apart from the rest of the world in fact, is the amazing variety of different sorts of options for undergraduate programs.
Trying to reduce all that variety onto one or two rankings is simply never going to make sense.
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They are the most important things, and USNews has tried to capture that with the “Academic Rep” portion of the ranking.
Thinking of other ways to get there, maybe:
- % of lecturers with terminal degree
- % of tenured profs who teach undergrads
- Student classroom satisfaction survey
- % of lectures under 50 students
Maybe things like that?
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Nothing. US News is just finally getting their act together. 
Vassar was #22 a couple of years ago, then the next year shot up to, I think, #13.
I guess it wouldn’t be US News if they stayed the same every year.
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Fascinating and fun paper.
Their methodology seems overly complex to me though. Why not just take the kids, sit them in front of a computer, and give them multiple head-to-head pairings of schools with the instructions of “Click on the one you would prefer to attend if money were no object.”
(And construction of a 4 school “region” made up of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska…and Minnesota? Sheesh. Which of these things is not like the other?)
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I did not say, or even imply, that the research standards at great schools like Wake and Tufts are low. I meant that these schools emphasize the importance of full professors teaching undergraduate students. I also did not say that undergrads do not benefit at all from faculty research. I just that that, IMO, undergrads benefit MORE (on a relative basis) from full professors teaching them than the research they those professors publish.
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Proving how ridiculous these rankings are. There is no discernible difference between a school at 31-35 vs 40 and 47. ETA no discernible difference in the quality of education
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Is there a way to see the ranking scores (versus just the ranks) without paying for some special membership?
deleted - someone already addressed above (W&L drop)
So there is a 3-way tie for 9, then a 3-way tie for 12 (including Chicago).
This is one of those situations where likely all 6 of those schools are in a functional tie for 10th. But the rankings format makes it seem otherwise.
And this also gets into the rather unfortunate zero-sum logic of rankings. In order for Chicago to be an unquestioned T10, 4 of those other 6 would need to not be a T10. But really the 6 schools in question–Brown, Hopkins, Northwestern, Columbia, Cornell, and Chicago–are different sorts of colleges in various ways, and it doesn’t make sense to insist they can’t all be really excellent versions of what they are trying to be, and that some MUST be deemed less excellent in order for another to be recognized as excellent.
But that’s what a rankings format requires. Ick.
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A few weeks ago you were making the case that people’s perceptions don’t matter and that the rankings reflect actual changes in educational value that supersede perceptions – essentially that the ranking is a more accurate leading indicator and perceptions will generationally follow. Your most recent comment seems to suggest as it relates to Chicago that current perception is more accurate than the ranking. Which is it? Who decides when the ranking is right and when perception is right?
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A lot of this has to be endowment related - can we afford to support more kids financially? And what happens if and when (at some point it always happens) the returns on their investments plummet. Not everyone has a bullet proof endowment - so there is risk - not to mention everyone’s operational costs (labor, goods) is going up…
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Cynical people have suggested US News consciously targets enough change to draw fresh attention each year, but also enough stability to maintain their reputation as the “standard” ranking.
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That’s me!
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For the LAC ranking, just move the schools we consider up 1-3 spots each, to account for the service academies.
So Bryn Mawr is really #27, Pomona is tied for 3rd with Wellesley and Swat, etc.
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