<p>anybody have thoughts on Boston College?</p>
<p>Based on trend analysis results from USNews 2000-2010 rankings, I came up with the following tiered ranking list. Under current USNews formula, the list should come within 20 % errors as compared with the new USNews top 25.</p>
<p>1-4 HYPS</p>
<p>5-7 MIT/Caltech/Penn</p>
<p>8-11 Chicago/Columbia/Dartmouth/Duke</p>
<p>12-16 Brown/Cornell/JHU/Northwestern/WashingtonU</p>
<p>17-20 Emory/Notre Dame/Rice/Vanderbilt</p>
<p>21-26 Berkeley/CMU/Georgetown/Michigan/UCLA/UVA</p>
<p>The USNWR rankings that will be issued in August 2010 and titled 2011 will actually be based on all data from 2009. It takes a long time to compile the numbers and write the articles. I am sure the editors already know the rankings and have written some of the articles for the August 2010 edition of USNWR.</p>
<p>And at the end of the day it doesnt matter one twit because its all a game for people obsessed with rankings. Its worse than a video game addiction.</p>
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<p>This would make a lot of sense, but wouldn’t sell a lot of magazines. My guess is they “improve” (a bit of sarcasm) the formula to allow a school like Duke or Chicago get into the top-5, giving them more attention than if they actually did rankings according to the best schools.</p>
<p>I agree it is a game for people obsessed with rankings. However, it does matter a lot. This is why there is an arms race for the lowest admit rate. Rankings are the basis for much of the strategy of what University of Chicago admissions did this past year. Rankings, particularly USNWR, matter a great deal to most universities.</p>
<p>modeling, but all you have done is copy the EXACT rankings of USNWR aug. 2009 from 1 to 27, leaving USC out.</p>
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<p>JohnA:</p>
<p>That is the way it should be. Even though USNews Top25 rankings vary year by year, yet we can observe a great deal of similarity especially for recent years (see Table). To observe or keep track for these changes, I divide Top 25 universities into six groups. Usually universities among the same group tended to rotate (compete) among themselves within the group rather than jump up or down to other groups. </p>
<p>USNews2010 USNews2009 Universities
1 1 Harvard University
1 2 Princeton University
3 3 Yale University
4 4 Stanford University
4 4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4 6 California Institute of Technology
4 6 University of Pennsylvania
8 8 University of Chicago
8 8 Columbia University
10 8 Duke University
11 11 Dartmouth College
12 12 Northwestern University
12 12 Washington University in St. Louis
14 15 Johns Hopkins University
15 14 Cornell University
16 16 Brown University
17 17 Rice University
17 18 Emory University
17 18 Vanderbilt University
20 18 University of Notre Dame
21 21 University of California at Berkeley
22 22 Carnegie Mellon University
23 23 Georgetown University
24 23 University of Virginia
24 25 University of California at Los Angeles</p>
<p>^agree with modeling, it’s amazing how little those tiers change.</p>
<p>Just remember the key rule of the US news Rankings-Penn, so long as Mort Zuckereman is the owner of the magazine, always moves up. Mr. Zuckerman has done more for Penn in the last 12 years than Ben Franklin ever did in founding the place.</p>
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<p>Except that Penn has been bouncing up and down in the 4-7 range for the last 13 years (since 1997). So either Mort will have to do a better job, or we’ll have to come up with a whole new conspiracy theory. :p</p>
<p>He’s owned US News since 1984–you’d think he’d have Penn at #1 by now. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Penn used to be in the high teens when US news started with this thing. As Yogi Berra says, you can look it up.
It moved up 15 places between 1987 and 2006 or something like that. And I would not rule out, him having Penn #1 some time soon.</p>
<p>“anybody have thoughts on Boston College?”</p>
<p>I do. I think BC will drop its Catholic association and will rise about ten places (24th). It worked for Georgetown.</p>
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No, YOU can look it up 
(it takes a while to load):</p>
<p>[U.S</a>. News Rankings Through the Years](<a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/]U.S”>http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/)</p>
<p>You’ll see that Penn has been ranked at 4-7 for each and every year since the 1998 ranking was published in 1997–that’s 13 straight years, including the current 2010 ranking. You’ll also see that Penn was ranked in the teens–and mostly the LOW teens–from 1987 (when the 1988 ranking was published) through 1996 (when the 1997 ranking was published).</p>
<p>Although I must admit that your characterization–as misleading as it is–is much more scintillating. :rolleyes: However, if we’re going to attribute Penn’s rise to Zuckerman’s ownership, it doesn’t really make much sense that he would wait 13 years (from his purchase in 1984 to Penn’s rise from the teens in 1997) to accomplish it. Not to mention that the detailed and explicit ranking criteria set forth by US News every year would make it a bit difficult for Zuckerman to single-handedly manipulate them to Penn’s benefit.</p>
<p>But really, who wants to bother with facts? Wild-eyed conspiracy theories are so much more fun. :)</p>
<p>BC in the top 25? i like it.</p>
<p>BC should be there now on balance, being number 1 in both hockey and sailing. ;)</p>
<p>well if you look at the rankings now BC is way more selective (26%) than just about every school in front of it up until UCLA at 24. wake forest is ahead of BC even though it takes 38 percent of applicants! so i think BC deserves to be bumped up 10 spots into 24th tied with UCLA and UVA (37% acceptance rate).</p>
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<p>The role of Zuckerman’s ownership in Penn’s ranking is one of those rumors that won’t die. Fwiw, I believe that this stems from the reaction of most observers to the differences between the USNews rankings and the “usual” ranking of Ivies. While Penn has been ranked very high by Morse and his staff, most people would hesitate to rank Penn as the fourth Ivy League school, and would probably look at Cornell and Penn to occupy the bottom two seats in this eight school popularity contest. One of the reasons being the higher admission rates at Cornell and Penn and the especially in the ED round. </p>
<p>But the conspiracy theorists might want to check if Zuckerman did not instruct Morse to drop the yield and give the admission rate a … very low percentage! Or accept the numbers presented by Lee Stetson as gospel and never compared them year to year! Unfortunately for Penn, their reputation for a total lack of transparency is well deserved.</p>
<p>natural,</p>
<p>BC may be more selective than some of those ranked above it, but is it getting the same caliber applicant? I’d wager that the applicant to Wake, UCLA and UVA is going to be pretty darn close to BC’s. Indeed, it looks like a considerable cross-applicant scenario.</p>
<p>So, what gives – down with Catholicism?!</p>
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Don’t know to a certainty, but I’m pretty sure that these changes in the weighting/inclusion of acceptance rate/yield were made by Morse and his staff SEVERAL YEARS AFTER Penn’s thirteen-year (and counting) run in the 4-7 range began in 1997. Of course, if someone has evidence to the contrary, I’m happy to be corrected. :)</p>