<p>Interesting post-- thank you. CalTech's ranking is particularly interesting. Princeton seems to be taking the lead over Harvard in the past 7 years, though Harvard has still been ranked #1 a couple more times.</p>
<p>Wow thanks iceman! That pretty much confirms that most rises and falls of universities are only temporary. UPenn however seems to have gone up permanantly but in general school ranking 10 years ago seem to have been pretty similar.</p>
<p>Thank you iceman, the information this provides is very useful for discussing the rankings and not many people have access for the past 15 years</p>
<p>Looking at it, I think that dispels some myths about the rankings fluctuating greatly...Duke dropped 1 spot in 15 years, Penn went up 6, NU went up 9, Wash U went up 12, Chicago went up 2, Brown went up 4, Michigan dropped 3</p>
<p>I just mentioned those schools because those are the ones that had some controversy surrounding them (ie underrated v overrated)</p>
<p>Other than Pennsylvania and Wash U.--both of which skyrocketed upwards--none of the schools have changed drastically. But does anyone have the rankings between 1983 and 1991? I believe these rankings, especially the first edition (1983 I think) would suprise a lot of people.</p>
<p>The main storyline besides the rise of Penn and WUSTL seems to be the decline of the top public schools in the rankings. Berkeley fell 8 spots, UCLA fell 9 spots, Michigan fell 3 spots, Virginia fell 6 spots, and UNC fell 7 spots. None of the top publics (at least of those listed by iceman) has gone up, and all but Michigan seem to have fallen significantly.
If I were to speculate, it would seem to indicate an increasing bias against public schools in the rankings, rather than any real change in quality.</p>
<p>^ and since they were based off of reputation, large state schools with expansive grad programs had great reps, while smaller privates focusing more on undergrad did not - this is why I have little problem with US News being unfavorable to large state schools with elite grad programs</p>
<p>And for what the rankings would be like by 1983 criteria (reputation only, and notice the rise of the publics), courtesy of Mr. Pink:</p>
<p>The US News Prestige Rankings </p>
<hr>
<p>(Mr. Pink's words) "These are the peer assessment scores from US World News - in other words, what people in the know (Provosts, Deans, Presidents) actually <em>think</em> about the schools. Only care about prestige? P1ssed off that Wash U is so high on the list? Annoyed that public universities get the shaft? Now you can rejoice!"</p>
<p>Top 50 National Universities
1. Harvard,
MIT
Princeton
Stanford
Yale
6. Caltech
University of California - Berkeley
University of Chicago
9. Columbia
Cornell
John Hopkins
12. Duke
University of Michigan
University of Pennsylvania
15. Brown
Dartmouth
Northwestern
18. University of California - Los Angeles
University of Virginia
20. Carnegie Mellon University
University of North Carolina
University of Wisconsin
23. Georgetown
Rice
University of Texas
Vanderbilt
Washington University in Saint Louis
28. Emory University
Georgia Tech
University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
31. University of Notre Dame
University of Southern California
University of Washington
34. Coll. of William and Mary
Indiana University - Bloomington
NYU
Penn State
UC San Deigo
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
40. Ohio State University
Tufts
UC Davis
University of Maryland
44. Boston College
Brandeis
RPI
Texas A&M
University of Florida
University of Iowa
UC Irvine</p>
<p>Here are the 1983 rankings (from another thread on CC):</p>
<p>National Universities:</p>
<p>Stanford 1
Harvard 2
Yale 3
Princeton 4
UC Berkeley 5
U Chicago 6
U Michigan 7
Cornell 8
U Illinois 8
Dartmouth 10
MIT 10
Caltech 12
Carnegie-Mellon 13
U Wisconsin Mad. 13
Brown 15
Columbia 15
Indiana U 15
UNC Chapel Hill 15
Rice 15</p>
<p>Looks like the Big Ten took a big hit except for Northwestern (private) which actually climbed in reputation. The other publics (Berkeley and UNC) also fell slightly</p>
<p>I wonder if rankings feedback upon themselves. The lower the publics rank got because of methodology changes that included student body quality, the lower the student body quality became in the next application cycle because the rankings were lower. Eventually the reputation score dropped by even the presidents deans and provosts. Maybe the opposite happened with Wash U. Advertisements increased the number of applicants, merit aid increased the quality. Each year, this was slowly reflected in USnews, where an increase in ranking led to an increase in the number and quality of students in the next applicant cycle. Because of the rise in rankings, the reputation score by the presidents deans and provosts also subsequently rose.</p>
<p>If I were buying stock in a company, I would not be that concerned how the company was doing 23 years ago. (1983) It would make much more sense for me to evaluate a more recent trend (5-10 years), and an evaluation of the stability of the company..........</p>
<p>Your forgetting that Duke is a young school and didn't achieve prominence until around the mid 1980s after the Nixon era, when the university launched its international and domestic campaign to expand its reputation dramatically.</p>