Time for my favorite college ranking site www.rankyourcollege.com. Be sure to keep refreshing the list for the full effect. http://www.rankyourcollege.com/rankings.html
If US News Rankings ceased to exist, which schools would be hurt and for which others wouldn’t it matter?
Sadly, very true. Universities that don’t care about them and just do their own thing, suffer from decreasing number of applications, lower yields and risk becoming unpopular among college students. Its kind of a vicious circle. Students care because they higher rank means the university is better, the Universities care because they think that a higher rank will mean better students and prestige and each feeds the other.
If you are a public university, you may be able to shrug off these rankings (given that you will get many many value oriented/bright students), but if you are a private school, that is increasingly dependent on tuition dollars from enrollment and private giving for survival, given the precipitous drop in Federal research grants, you ignore these rankings at your own peril.
The few universities that can do anything about them by opting out of these rankings ( Think the top 20 or so Universities) have no incentive to do that, because they directly benefit from these rankings, in terms of alumni giving and having their pick of the most desirable students. Sad state of affairs
Reed doesn’t participate. It doesn’t seem to be hurting as a result.
I can’t believe Tufts didn’t break the top 25. I would bet it’s at 26/27. UVA rises from 27 back to the top 25.
@guitar321 bruh uva was 26 and that was the lowest its ever been having been consistently ranked at 23. not really a surprise it rose back to where it usually is. tufts has been consistently around 27 and unless some magical formula changes, its going to stay about there.
Vanderbilt
Cornell
WashU
Rice
Which ones rise, which ones fall, which ones stay the same rank?
@CollegeAngst Boston University was dismissive of USNews rankings. They were, I believe, the only National university that refused to supply data. About 7 years ago, under a new president, they began to supply data and now trumpet their rise in the rankings.
Cornell will probably stay the same @ClarinetDad16 WashU might fall Vanderbilt might rise
This reminds me of the “what will the NMSF cutoff scores be” thread. Deep breaths, folks! Its one more day… and really… the rankings should not matter.
@Flurite the formula is not magical, but the reported numbers sometimes are 
As I said before, when the '20 acceptance rate is factored in, this might be enough to push it into the top 25. But #27 is fine with me, I think anything at or below 30 is probably accurate.
If it is 25th it is probably a tie for 24th/25th. They included 26 schools in the top 25 preview.
@ormdad Of course the schools below yours are accurate. It’s the ones above that are wrong. Plus acceptance rate really isn’t a huge factor in the criteria/weights. It’s 10% of a 12.5% category, making it quite negligible.
Only for the kind of student who is on cc. I don’t believe that the USNews rankings are important at all the the vast majority of students applying to college in any given year. I’d even guess that many kids couldn’t even tell you the rankings of the schools to which they are applying. CC is a very rarified bubble.
Meh, I guess I really had not ever looked at the methodology that closely, I see now that acceptance rate is really only 1.25% of the total score, so even a 2% drop will not really change the score.
I headed out to the supermarket to stock up on popcorn for tonight.
I still believe the system is being gamed very effectively by certain schools. The fact that they don’t rise or fall much in the rankings from year to year simply means that they are very good at gaming the rankings, and do so in the same manner every year.
Haha very funny, but I know you will be more than a little curious about where Northeastern shows up, especially compared to your Comm ave “rival”. I’m just a little curious myself; I think NEU should jump back to low 40s, but I was wrong about Tufts jumping into the top 25, so…
@orndad LOL I will be watching tonight! Hoping that a certain CC’er will be proven wrong!
Definitely. I’ll use USC as an example. It started deferring weaker students to spring semester. It also takes in a large amount of transfer students.
It does this so it can be more selective with its fall admissions to increase its US News rankings, because only the first-time fall students stats are reported. Transfer students and spring admissions don’t go into rankings.
That was a very effective strategy for them, and they increased their ranking a lot.