I guess one can’t use the “WASP” acronym that accurately now. Welcome, Wellesley 
- Williams College
- Amherst College
- Swarthmore College
- Wellesley college
- Pomona College
Then again, HYPSM is a bit out of order as well. Add a C or two 
Interesting point, @AlmostThere2018 , though I’d think that ranking and GPA/rigor would move together, wouldn’t they? At least at high schools where ranking is based on weighted GPA, like ours. Perhaps I’ve answered my own question.
USNWR rankings are mostly about popularity and family income of students. The fact that a “whopping” 5% of the score is related to their version of “Social Mobility” is like putting a bandaid on a bullet hole.
sounds like just another reason to largely ignore USNWR rankings. The # Pell grant students will not significantly impact my student’s education. Best to do your own research and determine how schools rank against your own list of priorities and preferences.
Brilliant.
I guess it would depend on if you and your kid think promoting economic diversity in higher education will significantly impact your kid’s college experience or not. Some feel economic diversity benefits the university and its students as a whole.
One needn’t even look very far. Davidson places seventh in this current Kiplinger’s ranking, a result made even more impressive in that LACs and universities have been combined:
I don’t think that this drop should be ignored or explained away. The school needs to address the changed composition of the rankings and climb back up.
I also think that part of the president’s explanation (below) is nonsense and reverse snobbery.
“Our standardized test scores are lower than the top 10 schools, in part because we use more reliable indicators of success”
US News rankings matter. People pay a lot of attention to them.
A well-credentialed applicant who is focused on prestige and rankings (and there are a lot of people like that) could now omit Davidson from his or her list of schools. I had a family member narrow his list of schools to MIT, Duke and Davidson a while back. If Davidson is now not a top-10 school, picking MIT or Duke and not even considering Davidson is more likely.
(Yes, I know people will respond that you shouldn’t focus on rankings or prestige, but people do.)
Of course, it’s a given people can focus and make choices in what ever ways they choose. I learned from another post that Davidson has ranked as high as 7 and as low as 21 since USNWR began LAC rankings. As others said, there are other rankings that put Davidson higher or lower.
We all know these rankings are aggregations of data points that attempt to capture quality. There’s subjectivity in determining what those data points are and how to weight them for a composite number. As they adjust methodology, those decisions are going to push some colleges higher and some lower. We also also know some colleges mis-report their data:
And some work very hard to change policies to game the system, etc. – looking at you Northeastern
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/
Whatever you think of rankings, anyway you slice it, Davidson does very well and has done so for 30 years, The drop this year is not because of a decline in quality of teaching or learning at the college nor less prepared students, fewer resources, etc. It’s because they didn’t do quite as well on a couple of measures and/or other LACs did slightly better. People can use this information to make college decisions however they want, but those choices don’t negate the reality of what a change in ranking – up or down – actually means in terms of what a college offers to a student and their experience. – which is nothing. Choosing college fit based on highest ranked college is one way to do it, I suppose, but seems ill-advised.
Finally, all that that said, I personally think focusing on improving Pell student graduation rates (one of the two measures that Davidson identified as hurting them this year) is a positive thing so if the college does more on this front, that’s a positive outcome from this year’s change in methodology.
@AlmostThere2018 Congratulations! You are the first to post the link to that Boston Magazine link this year. Although many others will follow. If you read the article it is a very positive article about Northeastern, despite the clickbait headline.
From 2014 too.
The points above are all very good and valid.
In my view (which others don’t and don’t have to share), Davidson is now #17 in perhaps the best-known college rankings. I wouldn’t be interested in a school ranked #17 if I were applying to college now, and unfortunately there are others who think like I do. I don’t see a need to pay $x and spend 4 years for a school ranked #17 when one can pay $x and spend 4 years for a school that’s ranked higher.
So, Davidson, don’t try to say it’s OK to be #17. For some people, it’s not. Fix the issues that caused the fall.
FYI. In 2016, Forbes ranked Davidson #25 overall. Now it’s #48.
@TomSrOfBoston and @Publisher – ah, I should have realized that article was old. My bad. It did turn up on my feed recently for work (higher ed policy) which is odd.