<p>^^^ You have a point :(</p>
<p>I am still observing the ranking but thought it was interesting that Purdue University took a big leap to being in the top 50.
University of Iowa appears to rank very similar as it did the previous year, though I still remember 2 years ago the school was ranked at 66.
-Back to USNEWS rankings</p>
<p>So Columbia is the most expensive school in the country. WoW.</p>
<p>I’ll be interested to see what the methodology change was</p>
<p>The damn counselor ratings saved a ton of colleges buttes.</p>
<p>Of the top three in the counselor’s ranking, two are service academies. Interesting.</p>
<p>Amazing that the top LACs didn’t move at all.</p>
<p>Wow, Columbia is really expensive lol… although it did still manage to get 6th place for best colleges: best values</p>
<p>Yale University 1 54.3% 73%
Harvard University 2 60.0% 72%
Princeton University 3 58.7% 69%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4 62.2% 68%
Stanford University 5 49.4% 69%
Columbia University 6 49.2% 66%
Dartmouth College 7 53.0% 66%
California Institute of Technology 8 54.6% 60%
Duke University 9 41.0% 63%
Cornell University 10 44.7% 61%</p>
<p>The LAC did have a few surprises, at least to me. Sewanee has moved up in the last couple years to 32, on par with Richmond and Holy Cross ranking wise. I need to drill down on those numbers because I am not sure what is driving Sewanee upwards. A great LAC but I am not sure about a ranking that high. Also, I was surprised to see DePauw drop out of the top 50 and I thought St. Olaf would jump up a few spots. Finally, I really hate these ties, 4 LAC’s ranked 41? </p>
<p>Does anyone know how much of a role, if any, acceptance rate plays in the ranking methodology?</p>
<p>Well, IvyPBear, I think the problem is that it’s very unclear how ‘quality of undergraduate education’ is determined. It looks like the link to the metric is broken right now - I’ll be interested to see what changes to the method were made. I find USNews of some use , not for the overall rankings, but for specific data which is sometimes hard to winkle out of the college sites. (The data is generally there, but sometimes not easy to find and sometimes different schools present data differently.)
Yeah - lots of schools of interest to us went down so maybe they won’t get as many applications from those who just blindly apply based on rank. :)</p>
<p>Top 11 LACs didn’t change one bit, except for Vassar falling down 1. Well there’s always next year.</p>
<p>University of Dayton moved up 11 spots. Can anyone beat that?</p>
<p>(I know…It’s difficult if you’re always in the top 10 
)</p>
<p>Cornell didn’t get shafted. +1?</p>
<p>It got shafted last year, and Cornell is good to be among the top 15 again.</p>
<p>huh? Pepperdine is ranked 53 dude.</p>
<p>^Sorry House of London, I deleted my post because I was looking at old rankings. My bad :)</p>
<p>Cornell was ranked 15 last year as well.</p>
<p>I thought Cornell was 16 last year?</p>
<p>… was certainly the lowering of weight placed on “peer” ranking from 25% to 15%, from other universities’ deans, et al. Then US News added a 7.5% weight from high-school counselors, replacing the lost 10% from peers’ ranking. </p>
<p>These counselors had USC, I think it was, 22nd, and UCLA, 30th.</p>
<p>Let’s sub parents and students into the rankings as does Princeton. At least there, UCLA is ranked pretty highly, higher than Cal, as is USC. Both UCLA and USC were ranked top-10 in this “poll.”</p>
<p>I would like to see how UCLA’s Administration responds. I wouldn’t think they would really care; just as long as they hit their diversity numbers, they’re happy.</p>
<p>I’m surprised that Princeton is now number 2. Also, does it seem that Brown is awfully low??? Especially when you compare it to UPenn and Dartmouth!</p>
<p>Nope. #15 two years in a row.</p>