<p>Apparently the new US News Rankings is in the process of making changes in how they evaluate schools which may attempt to even the playing field for those schools which do not change their policies in order to improve ranking or have not gamed the system.</p>
<p>If this does indeed occur, some of the top state schools will benefit. I would expect to see improvement from the likes of Cornell and Chicago at the expense of a school like WUSTL which is a fine school as it has catapulted in the rankngs the past few years.</p>
<p>What does this all mean? Not much unless you pick a school by ranking. In general, the better schools are consistently offerng a quality education over the long haul.</p>
<p>The new rankings will be published in lte August.</p>
<p>I do not think this is going to change things that much. Chicago, Cornell, JHU and a couple of state schools (like Wisconsin, UTA, Illinois and Indiana) will move up a little. WUSTL, Rice, Georgetown, NYU and USC may drop a little. Otherwise, the rest of the schools will stay the same.</p>
<p>A contact of mine does expect some small and moderate changes based upon previous data. Obviously,it is too early since data has not been collected for this year.</p>
<p>hm the only change I can find is "our goal is to make the footnotes to
the ranking tables much more specific."</p>
<p>Could you give me a more specific link?</p>
<p>Moreover I doubt that WashU, Rice,... will fall, because it would show how arbitrary this rankings are and that there is not much sense to distinguish between top 20 universities.
Why do people always assume that a University must manipulate data when they are ranked better?</p>
<p>Jusa, the USNWR IS arbitrary! LOL Cal and Michigan dropped from the top 8 or 9 top #21-#27! LOL But like I said, the changes will only change the current rankings by a tiny bit.</p>
<p>I am with you Alexandre. I think think that though USNWR does give valuable information, that if they just rated the various areas of the college and left them as such instead of coming up with some formula to rank them, it would be more useful. That way anyone looking at the schools can make their own determinations on what is more important to them. Right now the assessment of the schools too often comes down to the USNWR rank rather than the individual components.</p>
<p>Peer Assessment if often brought up, but I mean what is the difference between a 4.4 and 4.6. I mean, I feel like that score just reflects a school's graduate programs. To say that Rice is a 4.2, but Duke is a 4.6, I mean, does that suggest that Duke is far better in terms of academics. I mean Northwestern and JHU, 4.4 and 4.6 respectively, you are telling me that JHU has better academics outside the sciences and even in the sciences than Northwestern??</p>
<p>Plus how can weights be assumed to be accurate. Who says peer assessment is 25% rather than 30% etc. I think grouping schools in categories is the right way, but I guess that doesnt really sell magazines.</p>
<p>if they REALLY want to shake things up, they could eliminate the alumni giving rate which penalizes publics and keeps the well-endowed privates on top. (since they were state-supported, publics only recently -- last decade or so -- have started fundraising, whereas Harvard has been at if for 350 years)</p>
<p>offpoint, but Hopkins has a great Classics program, as well.</p>