USNews Boots George Washington University from Rankings

<p>I wanted to apply here too lol Is it worth it to still apply with them being booted off the World Rankings?</p>

<p>^^ yes, you should still apply if that college was on your list. Their position on some arbitrary college ranking should make NO difference in your plans.</p>

<p>I think anyone who loves GW should apply quickly!!! Who cares about their ranking, if it has exactly what you want you have even better chances to get in now</p>

<p>Who. The Hell. Cares. It’s amazing how worked up people get about these things, GWU still has the same professors, same location, and same students. It’s not a better or worse school than it was before. The fact that people actually think the US News rankings are the end all be all for whether one school is “better” than another is absolutely ridiculous.</p>

<p>re post 8 & 9 – I do not understand why GW is being treated differently than the other colleges whose data was found to be “fuzzy.”</p>

<p>I thought George Washington could not tell a lie.</p>

<p>The difference between Emory & Claremont McKenna vs. G.W. is that the inflated statistics were not significant
enough to change the rankings. Emory was still #20 in National University Ranking and Claremont still #10 in LAC even after the new statistics were factored in. According to U.S. News Director of Data Research Bob Morse in two previous cases at other schools, the corrected data wouldn’t have changed their rankings. In GW’s case, the school’s ranking would have been lower. Morse says it’s U.S. News policy in such an instance to unrank the institution until the next publication.</p>

<p>They were not busted. It was self discovery, self reported, and it was based on a rational premise. Many high schools no longer report class rank so GWU made their best guess that students with top standardized scores and grades were likely in the top 10% of their class because USNews needed them to report class rank.</p>

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<p>green4,
I am very skeptical of what USN claimed. I would it very difficult to believe that a drop of 25 points in SAT coupled with a drop of 13-percentage points in top-10 percent wouldn’t have changed anything. USN has been around for a quite a while; if a school were to have the same magnitude of change but in the opposite direction, it would probably have climbed at least a few spots! It sounds very fishy to me.</p>

<p>I remember when I uncovered the misreporting by USC in the engineering ranking few years ago, the USN claimed it was insignificant. My intuition told me it didn’t make sense. I was confident that it was bogus since I honestly thought I had a fairly good sense on numbers. A year later, USC dropped 3 spots.</p>

<p>Out of curiosity, did any USN editors graduate from Georgetown ?</p>

<p>Now’s probably a good time to apply to GW haha</p>

<p>Paramitas- did i see you posting in the Fordham early acceptance thread? Small world XD But yeah, totally a good time to apply to GW… I’m still applying EDII, has this deterred anyone from applying?</p>

<p>“Rjk, not when it is done over a long period of time by punishing your foes and helping your “friends.” Geographical and historical cronyism reigns supreme in that survey that is hardly filled by … objective and independent academics.”</p>

<p>xiggi, the PA has not changed much in the last 25 years. I do not think the voters have been influenced by cronyism with the passage of time. Also, I do not think the PA rating would change significantly if the voters were perfectly knoweldgeable and completely neutral. This said, I agree 100% that the PA should be much more transparent and audited for consistancy and accuracy. I also believe, and I have been saying this for years, that every variable in the USNWR formual (particularly selectivityy, faculty and financial resources) should be audited for accuracy and consistancy. Additionally, graduate rates and alumni donations should be assigned 0 weight as some universities will do better than others based on variables a university cannot control, such, as size of alumni base and makup of undergraduate majors (schools with large Engineering programs will have lower graduation rates.</p>

<p>I expect several other high profile universities to be exposed in the next 12-18 months, at which time stricter rules will be applied.</p>