<p>Indiana is certainly on the rise.</p>
<p>The University of Georgia</p>
<p>University of Georgia is becoming a first choice for a number of Texans and residents of other southwestern and southern states (besides Georgia). Athens is a great college town, SEC a great conference and it's close enough to Atlanta for transportation to be pretty easy.</p>
<p>University of Wisconsin - Madison
I cant beleive why no one has already mentioned this. It definately is one of the best state schools and is very strong in the sciences, economics and business
Id definately bet on this university becoming big.....</p>
<p>Well, in that case you could say that all the top tier state schools deserve to be top-20 .. which they are in a non-USNWR scenario ..</p>
<p>i dunno cept for reed and maybe a few others, oregon really does not have many great colleges.</p>
<p>I would say within 10 years, USC, UCLA will probably both rise to Top 20.</p>
<p>Notre Dame and Vandy are schools that might drop out of Top 20 in 10 or 20 years</p>
<p>Emory has risen up a tad in terms of popularity, I think.</p>
<p>Berkeley...I think it has a good chance of moving up from #21. :p</p>
<p>UI at UC........</p>
<p>Indiana, Wisconsin, and Florida. I see all of them moving up.</p>
<p>but to get in the top 20 they have to pass other schools, which ones will fall?</p>
<p>michigan!!</p>
<p>Harvard lolz.</p>
<p>Hellohi1 -- that is a good point. We cannot create 15.5, 16.5, etc. Which will fall? Isn't Berkeley ranked #19 for undergrad (#2 for Grad) ? Do people think any of these schools will supplant Berkeley? How about Michigan? UVA?</p>
<p>Outside of methods that overtly manage decisions for maximum effect on the US News metrics (rejecting lower scoring students with compelling stories in favor of higher scoring boring students, artificially limiting class size to a number 1 below the US News cutoffs, etc.), I don't think anything except huge amounts of $$ can move a school up or down. If a college should decide, for example, to markedly increase spending on faculty, that would likely cause their ranking to go up, from the combined effect of a more respected faculty attracting both more and a higher caliber (read scoring) student, and a higher peer assessment score which alone has a huge effect on the US News rank ordering.</p>
<p>OK, I just took another look at the US New rankings. 17th is a tie between Rice and Emory. 19th is a tie between Notre Dame and Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>I see Berkeley is #21. UVA #23 and Michigan/UCLA #25. Somebody is going to have to identify how these public schools are going to outspend the Privates ahead of them on faculty and scholarships vs. the current in order for these schools to move above Rice/Emory/Vandy/ND.</p>
<p>I just don't see state legislatures in this fiscal environment of 2008 (California is already cutting higher education budgets) devoting more resource to faculty salaries, which is, to me, the primary way of moving a school up the ranks.</p>
<p>I do see private schools increasing their spending to move up. These would include #22 Carnegie Mellon, #27 USC and #28 Tufts. I believe we've already seen the effects of USC's faculty spending and published merit money (Nat'l Merit Finalists receive a 50% tuition break first year, discetionary thereafter). That kind of dependable scholarship money can really drive up test scores for admits to these schools. I see USC moving up at least one rank each year for the next ten years. All they have to do is continue to budget for it. Pepperdine could do the same if they chose to spend their resources in that way... they already are #32 on selectivity -- #22 removing LACs from the count (malibu ocean view doesn't hurt in that regard :) )</p>
<p>Wisconsin, UMich, Carnegie Mellon, USC</p>
<p>While Dunn's point about uncertain state finances going forward, the state schools have lots of upside potential in increasing cash flow in fundraising, research funding and tuition. Currently state schools are giving all state residents a discount of around 75% over a similar quality private school for kids from upper middle and wealthy families. They could double tuition and still be half the tuition cost of similar privates.</p>
<p>Fundraising and adding endowment is the other big resource they are just starting to tap. Currently only a few state schools have endowments over $5 Billion. Many are on their first or second major campaign EVER and doing well with numbers in the Billions. They can keep up with everyone ecept maybe a the top handful of schools with over $10-$15 Billion in endowment.</p>