<p>You're absolutely right that a college's academic facility simply can't change significantly over the course of a year or even several years, since there's always the deal of tenured professors, the overall endowment, and the established curriculum, not to mention the campus culture and their inclination towards academics. What CAN change pretty quickly, and HAS quite a bit in recent years, is the institution's selectivity. It all depends on the lure and the applicants that year. Whether right in principle or not, selectivity strongly influences that school's rank according to US News. Examples would be Rice, WUSTL and Tufts for the major research Uni's, and probably to the greatest degree for LAC's, Skidmore Haverford and I would suspect places like Southwestern U (which are not on the radar screen of most LAC seekers in the Northeast). Because largely of fears about grade deflation relative to all the other schools, Swarthmore and U Chicago are definitely going to suffer over the next few years</p>