US News releases 2016 college rankings of National Universities

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
1

The top 25 national universities ranked by U.S. News

  1. Princeton University — unchanged
  2. Harvard University — unchanged
  3. Yale University — unchanged
  4. Columbia University — unchanged
  5. Stanford University — unchanged
  6. University of Chicago — unchanged
  7. Massachusetts Institute of Technology — unchanged
  8. Duke University — unchanged
  9. University of Pennsylvania – down 1
  10. California Institute of Technology — unchanged
  11. Johns Hopkins University – up 2
  12. Dartmouth College – down 1
  13. Northwestern University – up 1
  14. Brown University – up 2
  15. Washington University in St. Louis – down 1
  16. Cornell University — unchanged
  17. Vanderbilt University – up 1
  18. University of Notre Dame – down 2
  19. Rice University – up 1
  20. University of California-Berkeley — unchanged
  21. Emory University — unchanged
  22. Georgetown University — unchanged
  23. University of California-Los Angeles — unchanged
  24. Carnegie Mellon University – up 2
  25. University of Southern California – up 2

There seems to be a heavy penalty for being a public University in these rankings. No public universities cracked the top 15 and that has been consistent for many years.

2

Because of the weight given to endowment per capita, no public university ever will

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1809465-usnwr-ranking-methodology-the-nuts-bolts-or-is-it-just-nuts.html#latest

3

Here is an interesting paper on why “Big endowments” may not be that beneficial and may even skew the incentives

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1787372

4

If this persists, the HYP trinity will have a trinity v2 in C/S/C. Mark my words

5

Except – newsflash! – Stanford has been regarded as equivalent (and in the eyes of many superior) to HYP for at least the past 15-20 years. Yale used to be the only college that won any significant percentage of head-to-head admissions decisions vs. Harvard, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Stanford hadn’t pulled ahead of Yale in that regard. On the anecdotal evidence around here (East Coast, traditionally very Ivy League oriented), Stanford wins at least 50% of the head-to-heads.

So it’s really a foursome . . . and that’s being kind to Yale and Princeton (notwithstanding USNWR’s longstanding preference for Princeton).

6

@JHS While Parchment.com does not have a big presence in the Northeast, it still gives a good way to test how these colleges fare in match ups. Stanford seems to win most of the match ups against Princeton, draws statistically against Yale and loses only to Harvard.

Parchment’s new rankings based on these match ups, place Stanford on top. Interestingly Harvard plummeted in the 2016 rankings. I wonder what went on there. Something odd with the data.

Chicago seems to be making steady gains in this ranking. I think it is in the top 10 now.

7

That’s an interesting point that looking at student preferences, as measured by which school cross admits choose, would product a somewhat different rank ordering.

A majority will choose either Harvard or Yale over Princeton, as noted Stanford is winning a higher percentage in recent years, a good number of students from Notre Dame families will go there regardless of where else they get in, etc.

That’s not to say a revealed preference ranking is necessarily a better approach, but it would lead to somewhat different results.