<p>Does anybody have any idea as to when the new rankings come out? I don't need a specific date, but a month of release would be nice. I'm really eager to see if WUStL cracks the top 10 with their persistence to waitlist more and more students and cut their student body by 500 students.</p>
<p>The next report comes out in August.</p>
<p>People on CC greatly overrate the impact that WashU's student enrollment cut will have on their ranking. Acceptance rate is only 1.5% of the total USNWR score. They might also get marginal benefit from class size data and indirectly in areas like Graduation & Retention rate. But the reality is that the reduction in class size is going to have very little impact on how WashU measures up in the USNWR ranking. </p>
<p>The best way by far for WashU to improve its ranking is by getting an increase in their Peer Assessment score of 4.1. To change this, they might have to physically move the school. The only other Top 20 that have a PA this low are located, like Wash U, hundreds of miles from NYC. Those schools are Rice (4.1), Emory (4.1), Vanderbilt (4.1) and Notre Dame (3.9). Until the geographic bias is eliminated, it looks unlikely that Wash U will be able to crack the top 10.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot hawkette.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The only other Top 20 that have a PA this low are located, like Wash U, hundreds of miles from NYC. Those schools are Rice (4.1), Emory (4.1), Vanderbilt (4.1) and Notre Dame (3.9).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So what? The following non-East Coast schools have PA scores higher than 4.1:</p>
<ul>
<li>Stanford (4.9)</li>
<li>Caltech (4.9)</li>
<li>Chicago (4.7)</li>
<li>Northwestern (4.4)</li>
<li>Cal (4.7)</li>
<li>Mich (4.5)</li>
<li>UCLA (4.3)</li>
</ul>
<p>
I doubt it. Their rank was as high as #9 in 2004 but has dropped since then. </p>
<p>the 2008 grad school rankings are out</p>
<p>What difference does the top-10 make? It's not like WashU has changed between last year and this year. Colleges and universities are like ocean tankers, they turn very slowly.</p>
<p>Shifts in ranking over the short term have nothing to do with the underlying quality of the school and everything do do with USNEWS changing their ranking formula, specifically to shake up the rankings and sell the new issue.</p>
<p>Peer assessments have some issues. For one thing, US News refuses to divulge how many "peers" actually "Assess" each school. There's a big difference between 1 person saying a school is great and 20 or 30 people. And, of course, there is a strong possibility that college administrators don't necessarily know all that much about the actual student experience on other campuses (heck, sometimes they don't even know much about the actual student experience on their OWN campuses). Plus, colleges and universities increasingly are using marketing techniques to try to garner higher peer assessments from other schools.</p>
<p>In short, I wouldn't place too much weight on the peer assessment score of any single school, nor would I say that a few tenths of differences between schools is a sign of anything much.</p>
<p>Quite a high peer assessment for UCLA...</p>
<p>Anyway, Rice (4.1), Emory (4.1), Vanderbilt (4.1) and Notre Dame (3.9)</p>
<p>Four great schools, four low peer ratings. Peer ratings should be eliminated..</p>
<p>Interesteddad,
If I have read it once, I have read it a thousand times-that is, the comment that changes in universities happen very slowly. My response to this is…..ugh! I understand the thinking, but I don't understand why people think it has to be this way and in some respects, I just don't think that this is a correct sentiment. </p>
<p>IMO, there has been a great widening of the class of elite high school students who in turn have gone on to colleges at a much broader cross section of schools than ever before. I believe strongly that there are several stakeholders in the college process-students, families, alumni, recruiters, faculty-and most of these groups (the faculty are the exception) know of this elite student diaspora beyond the Ivy League and the very top privates. I think that these students, families, alumni, and recruiters recognize that great change has taken place in American college education as there is now excellence to be found in many, many more schools and in more different places than ever before. The students and these other stakeholders understand the change far better than the media and the historic status quo fears the change and perhaps even denies the change. </p>
<p>Think back to how our country was thirty years ago, twenty years ago, even ten years ago. So much has changed culturally, politically, demographically, climatologically, technologically, spiritually, ethnically, financially, geopolitically, behaviorally, psychologically, etc. Competition has driven many of these changes and these evolutions are seen as good in nearly every aspect of our society. Competition and change happen all over American society and continually reorder business and various aspects of our culture. Yet through all of this time and all of this transformation, somehow the college pecking order has hardly changed at all. Why? Is that a good thing? Are the stakeholders really being best served by this seeming intractability? </p>
<p>If there was a god, then USNWR would reorder its methodology (as it often does) to create a result reflective of the CURRENT quality of students and schools in all parts of the country. That would bring competition more into the college process and empower and embolden the consumer to make college choices for the right reasons rather than for reasons of historic prestige.</p>