<p>Im just wondering if the same people that assess the national universities category also assesss the LACs, comprehensive, and masters categories. Does "peer" in this case refer to colleges within a specific category or all colleges? </p>
<p>If it refers to all colleges, it is interesting that stonehill and elizabethtown are assessed higher than USC, NYU, UCSD, UT.</p>
<p>No, rankers are asked to evaluate only their peers. So a provost at a national university who elects to participate would only be ranking other national universities.</p>
<p>There was some controversy this year in the National Universities category, incidentally. Many schools went down in rating, something that shouldn't happen just by chance, even given the natural vagaries in ratings year by year. I don't know if US News has issued any more information about this (they were asked to look into it).</p>