<p>
</p>
<p>Well, the ranking methodology might have something to do with it. Let’s face it, USC is a much better school today than it was 20 or 30 years ago, when it was clearly academically inferior to UCLA. Now it successfully competes for the same applicants, but 2 and 3 decades ago it was not considered an elite school; not even close. Well, who do you think shows up in Who’s Who? Mostly people who graduated college 2 or 3 decades ago. Same with Payscale; it’s a crappy data set anyway, but even if it were valid, Forbes looks at salary figures for recent graduates as well as salary figures for “mid-career” people who graduated 19-20 years ago . . . when USC wasn’t a very good school.</p>
<p>It seems to me this methodology is automatically going to downgrade any school that is significanty better today than it was 20-30 years ago. I’d definitely put USC in that category. Same for WUSTL, now ranked #13 by US News but only the 32nd-best research university on Forbes’ list (and much lower than that when you throw in the LACs).</p>
<p>For my money, though, many of the top LACs do deserve to be ranked above both USC and WUSTL in a unified ranking.</p>