<p>The University of Chicago took a big jump in the USNWR rankings in 2007, I think, after they sat down and analyzed why they were being ranked lower than they thought they should be. Part of what they learned was that they were hurting themselves by the way they reported some of their data – e.g. (I think this is the case), they were reporting each of their Core Hum courses as one course (with hundreds of students and various sections) rather than as multiple faculty-taught seminars, which is really what they are. </p>
<p>Then, they restricted the size of each of the Core sections to 19 students. The result was that Chicago’s percentage of classes with fewer than 20 students – a USNWR ranking element – went from low to high.</p>
<p>I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I think there was something similar with research money – they weren’t reporting that the way other universities were, so they weren’t getting credit for the research actually happening there.</p>
<p>So part of it was reporting data on a basis consistent with others, and part was paying attention so that they improved their numbers – a little bit of managing to the rankings.</p>
<p>More importantly, the University of Chicago always had a top-echelon faculty and academic reputation, but for many years the quality of undergraduate student life left something to be desired, and that hurt the college’s reputation. The current generation of faculty and administration leaders has essentially been working to improve that their whole careers, and over the past decade they finally hit a tipping point where it was easy to see that students were much happier and more engaged, and Chicago was an attractive place to go to college other than just for its academics.</p>