<p>Hey -</p>
<p>Some months back I bumped into a website with a table showing all the USN&WR College Rankings since the rankings began in 1983. Unfortunately, I failed to bookmark the site and now of course I can't find it. I'm hoping somebody her might be able to post a link.</p>
<p>Thanks much!</p>
<p>dog</p>
<p>I bookmarked the site when I saw it last time. Here you go:</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”>U.S. News Rankings Through the Years)</p>
<p>WHAT THE FRUIT?!</p>
<p>Cal was #5 in 1988…then plummeted to #24 in 1989!</p>
<p>What the heck happened?</p>
<p>I’ve always felt that Cal alongside Georgetown and Brown are the most underrated schools on the USNews rankings.</p>
<p>Changes in USNWR ranking methodology.</p>
<p>What specific changes? A 19 spot drop is beyond loco.</p>
<p>If I had to guess, it probably was a change from mostly or fully peer assessment based criteria to more selectivity and selectivity-related based criteria. Berkeley in the 1980s had highly regarded faculty and high quality rigorous programs in most majors, but was not that selective at the undergraduate level, compared to today.</p>
<p>There’s quite a bit about the history of the ranking and how they came about in “Crazy U”. I think they mention a bit about the early methodology and how it’s changed, but I don’t recall the details.</p>
<p>
1988 methodology was 100% survey “Peer Assessment”.
2014 rankings, if using 100% Peer Assessment methodology, have Berkeley rated #5 (or #6) - same as back in 1988.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus is correct. USNWR ranking methodology changed.</p>
<p>Calling the MO of the original ranking a “methodology” is a stretch. If today’s Peer Assessement survey remains a hopeless instrument that rewards cronyism, gamesmanship, and lacks both integrity and context, the original documentation used would make People Magazine surveys look amazing. </p>
<p>The original survey was limited in scope and was nothing more than an informal beauty contest. And its only value was one of providing some entertainment. A joke it was! </p>
<p>I think you’re being a little harsh. The first survey was done when the rankings had no value, therefore, they were a pretty honest assessment of what professionals thought of all the schools in the country. It might have been a crude measure, but it was probably along the lines of “Tell us which schools you think are best.” No one thought anything of it.</p>
<p>Fast forward to today, and if the same methodology were used, people might intentionally rank some schools lower, just to raise their own school, because the importance of the rankings is so well known. In context, their original methodology made sense. It would not make sense to continue to do it that way for the reasons you mentioned.</p>
<p>The first US News ranking was based on peer assessments by college presidents.
In their view in 1983, Berkeley was one of the top 6 (along with Harvard,Princeton,Yale,Stanford and Chicago). Today, the Peer Assessment survey includes a broader range of participants. It now counts for 22.5% of the ranking. That is as much as or more than the weight assigned to any other criterion, and Berkeley’s PA scores remain very high (4.7 in 2012, the 6th highest score). However, many other criteria have been added (including student selectivity).</p>
<p>Here is a description of all the current criteria and their weights:
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/09/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/09/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights</a></p>
<p>Compared to most of the other top 20 national universities, Berkeley has:
<p>Forbes does not include student selectivity among its criteria (although it does include 4 year graduation rates, as well as student satisfaction and several other criteria.) It ranks Berkeley 15th among research universities and 22nd overall. The Parchment ranking of LACs and universities, based on student cross-admit choices, places Berkeley at 19th. In the Washington Monthly ranking of national universities, which places a heavy emphasis on research excellence (as well as “social mobility” and “service”), Berkeley is #5.</p>
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<p>Not sure why I was being harsh. There were no undergraduate rankings (obviously) before USNews decided to play with the concept. That first attempt amounted to ask a finite number of “people in the know” to rank a list of schools. There were few guidelines and surely not any that define “excellence at the undergraduate” level. Of course, I am happy to share that not much progress has been made. The instructions for the current survey are still hopelessly loose and there is still zero mechanism to control the integrity and knowledge of the responders. The Peer Assessment has been a joke since Day One and not much progress can be expected, safe and except for a gradual reduction in the percentage of contribution to the final scores. </p>
<p>And, fwiw, there is NO doubt that people are intentionally “rank some schools lower, just to raise their own school” as the stories about the PA at Clemson and Wisco indicated. However, the biggest issue of the current PA is not so much the gamesmanship and the cronyism that afflicts the results as the simple fact that the responders simply do not have much of a clue of how ALL the schools there are asked to measure are actually doing. At best, the responders might know how their own school (perhaps) are doing vis-a-vis a HANDFUL for direct competitors, but they really are not in a position to “grade” over 200 “peers” in a meaningful way.</p>
<p>So you end up with a hodgepodge of gamers and people relying on hearsay and … the past editions of the rankings for guidelines. </p>
<p>And the above is a charitable appraisal! </p>
<p>PS To be clear, while the USNews has made NO tangible improvements in its methodology, it remains --by far-- the best of the bunch. The other rankings (described above) are all incorporating elements that are even worse than the PA in the USNews reports. Vedder’s crap is silly, and so is the WM’s Mother Teresa rankings. Parchment is simply an example of GIGO and has zero validity. </p>
<p>When a ranking places an academic junkyard such as UT in El Paso above of just behind Harvard in a ranking, you know that the result is not about academic excellence but about some misguided metric of social engineering. </p>
<p>"And, fwiw, there is NO doubt that people are intentionally “rank some schools lower, just to raise their own school”…as there is NO doubt that private universities, such as Emory, fudged OBJECTIVE test scores in order to raise their profile at USNWR. </p>