Top 20 US Universities - Combined Rankings of US News, Niche, Forbes & Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education

Since so many people each year pore over college rankings, whether it’s US News, Niche, Forbes or WSJ / Times Higher Ed, I thought I’d take the top 20 schools for the 2021 list of US News and compare their rankings in Niche (2021), Forbes (2019) and WSJ (2021). For added fun, I’ve then re-ranked the top 20 based on their average rankings in all four polls. I’ve only included the top 20 in US News’ 2021 rankings, with a couple additions of USC and Carnegie Mellon, because the comparative rankings in the four polls get wonky after the top 20. For instance, a school like UCLA is ranked by WSJ at 26, but that list includes Williams and Amherst at 21, so its average score drops lower than if WSJ also created two lists.

Of course, these are all amazing schools, and the following twenty+ after them are also great, so kudos to all!

Key: University|US News & World Report (2021)|Niche (2021)|Forbes (2019)|WSJ/Times Higher Education (2021) |Average Rank in the Four Polls|

  1. Harvard|2|2|1|1|1.5
  2. MIT|4|1|4|2|2.75|
  3. Yale|4|4|3|3|3.5|
  4. Stanford|6|3|2|4|3.75|
  5. Princeton|1|6|5|7|4.75|
  6. Duke|12|5|9|5|7.75|
  7. Cal Tech|9|8|8|7|8|
  8. Brown|14|9|7|5|8.75|
  9. UPenn|8|10|6|13|9.25|
  10. Columbia|3|12|14|15|11|
  11. Dartmouth|13|13|10|12|12|
  12. Northwestern|9|14|17|10|12.5|
  13. UChicago|6|17|16|14|13.25|
  14. Cornell|18|18|11|9|14|
  15. Johns Hopkins|9|21|22|11|15.75|
  16. Vanderbilt|14|11|27|17|17.25|
  17. Rice|16|7|21|15|14.75|
  18. Wash U|16|15|31|18|20|
  19. Notre Dame|19|16|18|28|20.25|
  20. USC|24|19|30|19|23|
  21. Carnegie Mellon|26|22|37|20|26.25|
  22. UCLA|20|24|38|26|27|
1 Like

I’ve done the same, but strictly for Computer Science, which my D is applying for, and have 7 different sources. I think it helps balance our a few obvious outlier rankings (Princeton not in Niche’s top 150 CS programs?)

IMHO, a collection of “overall” college rankings doesn’t mean much more than a single “overall” ranking. No one goes to college for an overall education. But for those who enjoy/value overall rankings, this provides a slightly richer perspective.

1 Like

There’re infinite number of ways to assign weights to each of these rankings. Assigning different weights to different factors is how we have so many different rankings in the first place.

1 Like

But given the number of students who change their intended majors after starting their degrees, an overall ranking still has value compared to the individual ranking that you may not actually end up majoring in.

1 Like

Rice seems to have been slighted.

1 Like

Why limit it to 20?

Should be at least 50.

You have UCLA that had a 37 so you needed 20 through 36 as well.

Thanks. I think Princeton (1+6+5+7=19 19/4=4.75) and Stanford (6+3+2+4=15 15/4=3.75) need to be swapped.

1 Like

Oh, @LostInTheShuffle, you’re right! So sorry, I inadvertently typed a comma instead of a colon for Stanford’s average, so it only averaged the first and fourth polls for that particular school. Trying to figure out if I can edit my original post.

But it should be correctly ranked: 4. Stanford and 5. Princeton.

@Greymeer, I would have loved to rank the top 50 (and I guess I still could), but as I originally noted, the top 20 schools are substantially similar in all four polls. After the top 20, though, Forbes and WSJ deviate from Niche and US News, as the latter two have a separate rank for top liberal arts colleges in the country, such as Williams and Amherst.

About 1/3 of students change majors (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/12/08/nearly-third-students-change-major-within-three-years-math-majors-most) and many of them in the same general area of study (math to physics, physics to engineering, etc.)

If you think that being a top “overall” school is more important than being top at what you intend to major in, then we can disagree. I would never suggest someone intending to go into Mechanical Engineering prefer Yale or Brown over Purdue because it’s “overall” so much better.

@SJ2727 @RichInPitt

Regarding the percentage of students who change majors, it is important to remember that the report at https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2018/2018434.pdf (which the Inside Higher Ed article references) counts changes of major starting at the original declared field of study.

This means that students who enter undeclared but change their intended major before declaring any major (i.e. still undeclared) would not be counted as students who change major in this report. This could include not-quite-voluntary changes of intended major due to the undeclared student failing to gain admission to a major with a competitive secondary admission process – a college where the student’s desired major is highly competitive but the student is not directly admitted to it may lose points on the “best college for intended major” since the student is less likely to be able to get into it.

Regarding choosing the “best college for intended major” versus “best college overall” (for whatever definition of “best” is used), that could depend on how likely the student will be to stay in the (intended) major. Although this may not be knowable for sure, some students even while in high school do give signals about whether they are firmly decided or more likely to be undecided. Also, for a student who has at least some likelihood of changing (intended) major, “best college for each of the other possible majors” may also be a consideration, especially if it is obvious that the student will choose a major only within a certain general area.

It makes little difference whether you rank by a 3rd party website’s overall rating or a 3rd party website’s intended major rating. Far more important is that the college does well in the criteria that is important to you, which is almost certainly completely different from whatever magazine or website’s ranking you choose, regardless of if it is an overall ranking or an in major ranking.

For example, the USNWR CS ranking is 100% based on a survey given to “top academics” in which they are asked to the colleges on a scale of 1=marginal to 5=distinguished. Whlle the USNWR overall ranking is only 20% the survey and also includes things like 10% financial resources per student, 7% faculty salary, etc.

If the “top academic” marginal/distinguished survey, faculty salary, or whatever is really important to you, then focus on the colleges that do well in that criteria. And also emphasize other criteria that is important to you, even if it is not part of the ones used in USNWR’s weightings. Don’t choose colleges just because they happen to do well in whatever arbitrary weightings some website chooses.

I doubt that USNWR, Forbe’s, Niche or whoever really believes that to create an accurate list of the true best colleges, you need to have a formula with the listed weightings. I expect it’s more about making money via sales or website traffic, and choosing weightings that keeps the familiar HYPSM… names at the top helps make the rankings seem more scientifically accurate and increase revenue earned.

This certainly happened to my daughter and a few of her friends (at different colleges, at some of which you only officially declare a major at the end of sophomore year anyway). Certainly glad as a result that she chose a college that was “better overall” than the main alternative she was weighing initially, which was better in her initially intended major but not as strong generally (however you assess that general strength, @Data10’s post quoting mine seems to have missed the general point I was making which was general vs specific strength, not how much reliance one puts on published rankings).

I am well aware of the general point, but this thread is about rankings and the quoted text mentions comparing the value in overall ranking vs ranking of a particular major.

The general point depends on the rankings being an accurate assessment of general vs specific strength. To evaluate whether this is true, you need to dig deeper and understand the criteria used for the specific ranking, or even whether the ranking actually assesses overall vs particular major.

For example, RichInPitt mentioned being surprised that Princeton did not rank well in CS on Niche. Niche’s CS ranking is based on the following. I don’t think this in anyway resembles an accurate way to evaluate the quality of a CS program. The ranking is expected to better correlate to overall ranking than being CS specific since half of the weighting is Niche overall + SAT scores. Consistent with the bulk of the ranking relating to overall measures, Princeton and other HYPSMC… type schools are expected to do quite well. HYSMC make up 5 of the top 6 ranked CS schools at Niche. Princeton is strangely missing. The reason why Princeton isn’t listed is because Niche does not identify Princeton as having a CS major. Rather than having CS major, Niche thinks Princeton’s most popular major is Computer Hardware Engineering.

30% – Niche Overall Ranking (not specific to CS)
20% – Self Reported Niche Member SAT Scores
20% – Various Niche Site Member Surveys, Mostly Involving CS
15% – Percent Majoring CS
5% – Total Number of CS Grads
5% – Self Reported CS Major SAT Scores vs Self Reported Overall SAT Scores
5% – CS R&D Expenditure

While such ranking lists can be interesting reading for personal amusement, I hope nobody is taking them too seriously for choosing which college to attend.

Exactly, was surprise that U of I is not even in top 20. But anyone who knows U of I engineering can tell, its in top 10. So it all boils down to what is your intended discipline/major.

Good luck to all high school seniors on their final decision!

College decisions are based on so many subjective factors (including intended major, financial aid, proximity to your hometown), but in case you’re wondering how other admitted students chose between your final schools, here’s a link to Parchment, which compiles data when a student is admitted to two schools and actually attends one or the other. (The link takes you to a comparison between Brown and Northwestern, but you can easily substitute schools for comparison.)