Is there a site that provides the last 5 to 10 years of US News rankings that allows you to see what schools have bettered or lessened their ranking?
Please advise
Thanks
This is a bad idea.
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I second that.
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Why is it a bad idea ?
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Because it is meaningless. It will tell you nothing about the schools, either individually or vis a vis others.
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Nor does it tell you anything about outcomes. The whole idea is a specious waste of time and energy.
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For what it’s worth…
Well, let’s see…
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The USNWR ranking system is more a marketing gimmick than a scientific measurement of quality or outcomes.
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Its ranking methodology has lots of flaws and has evolved over the years, making historical comparisons meaningless.
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Some schools have been known to game the rankings.
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Whether a college is a fit or not for you, depends on a variety of factors, and the college’s movement up or down the USNWR rankings shouldn’t be one of them.
If a college has moved up in rankings, should you apply to it? Or conversely if it has gone down should you not apply?
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Aside from the general worthlessness of the rankings, USNews has changed their methodology quite a bit over the years. That means that the much of the changes in rankings are due to changes in methodology.
Of course, the fact that USNews felt the need to redo their methodology so much over the years demonstrates how much faith they put on their own rankings…
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I’ll disagree, somewhat, with the consensus. I think there is SOME value in rankings by USNWR and others. That said, the fact that a school moved up from 16 to 14 or vice versa over the last 5 years has low information content. Fine gradiations of ranking difference have little informative value.
Sure. But that’s not what OP is looking for. They’re asking which schools “have bettered or lessened their ranking”
I suppose there is some rationale for the prevailing assumption that the OP is looking at the rankings, and movement in them over time, as some measure of quality. To be fair, though, that wasn’t explicitly stated.
Me, I’m now fascinated to dive into these resources and figure out who’s playing the game well, or not so much! Thanks for providing them.
As someone who enjoys data for data’s sake, I’ll provide without comment on value. And I won’t share the full spreadsheet and all of the analysis that I completed - I’ll let you have your own fun.
1983-2007 are at U.S. News Rankings for 57 Leading Universities, 1983–2007 - Public University Honors
2008-2015 are at U.S. News National University Rankings, 2008-2015 - Public University Honors
2015-2022 are at Average U.S. News Rankings for 123 Universities: 2015-2022 - Public University Honors
But I noticed that the only time my alma mater was in the top 15 (or even top 20) was when I was a student, so there obviously is some value…
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Most who use the rankings don’t understand just that…the data. Frequently there’s little of it. Occasionally, in the case of engineering for example, there’s none.
My question is whether the drop in rankings was because you were there, or because you left…
Back in the day – maybe 30-40 years ago – the U of Wisconsin was in and around the top ten.
And then USNews drastically changed its formula. And now Wisconsin is in the 40s.
Did the U of Wisconsin decline? I don’t think so. It’s just an example of how rankings can be manipulated to show what the publisher wants to show.
UW wasn’t the only public flagship that tumbled – I think Cal-Berkeley and Michigan were also top-10ish back then, and a bunch of other flags were a good bit higher than they are today.
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The early rankings were purely based on a survey given to college administrators. After complaints about this methodology being inaccurate, USNWR started defining “best” by a formula with a bunch of arbitrarily selected weightings. The weightings emphasized metrics that high endowment per student colleges do well on, which I expect is largely an effort to keep HYP on top. Seeing HYP on top makes some readers feel makes the formula is accurate, which leads to more sales. As you noted, publics did better on the early rankings before the formulas. Some specific rankings from the first USNWR list in 1984 are below.
Stanford – #1
Berkeley – #5
Michigan – #7
Illinois – #8
MIT – #10
Wisconsin – #13
Penn – Not in top 25
Duke – Not in top 25
In the time since the arbitrary formulas began in 1989, some colleges that have had unique changes in ranking include
Caltech – #9 in 1999 → #1 in 2000 after USNWR fixed their statistical methodology to use standard practices → #4 after adding special “logarithmic adjuster” in category where Caltech surpassed HYP by largest degree and reports of firing staff → #12 in 2020
Columbia – #15 in 1996 → #11 in 2004 → #4 in 2011 → #2 in 2022 → Delisted due to incorrect reporting
Chicago – #15 in 2006 → #3 in 2017 after Boyer/Zimmer/Nondorf efforts
Northeastern – Not Listed before 2007 → #96 in 2008 ->#39 in 2017 via efforts described in the article at https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/ .
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