<p>when do the usnews rankings come out?</p>
<p>August. ghgfdh</p>
<p>yea, there has been like 100 posts on this...</p>
<p>Not that the ranking matters, anyway...</p>
<p>do the rankings even change that much?</p>
<p>For the most part, no. It's interesting to see how biased US News is, though (you very, very rarely ever see a public school break the top 20).</p>
<p>Thats because public schools shouldn't. For graduate studies, yes, but not for undergraduate stuff.</p>
<p>I don't know that they are specifically biased against Public Unis, but the emphasis on financial resources does often play against those schools, who can't match the alumni giving rates and endowments of the top privates. Whether or not financial stats should be included is debatable--it does affect applicants and students (in the form of better/worse finaid and better/worse facilities, especially), but huge per student endowments/alumni giving rates aren't <em>necessary</em> for a school to be excellent--they just help a lot.</p>
<p>Also S:F ratio is a place where privates have a huge advantage.</p>
<p>My interpretation of the rankings is if you looked at it from an OOS perspective. If you are in-state, boost your school a fair bit.</p>
<p>endowment and S:F ratio are only two of the areas where top privates are superior to top publics; there is also caliber of students, selectivity, retention rate, grad school placement, etc.</p>
<p>top privates beat top publics in almost every relative quantifiable measure. usnews is only "biased" if you think that there is some "intangible" quality that top public schools possess that makes them equal to/superior to top privates</p>
<p>also worth noting is post #6 on this thread, which suggests public schools are actually HELPED by the USNEWS methodology compared to top privates: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=337654%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=337654</a></p>
<p>elsijfdl, I disagree with the notion that public universities are helped by the USNWR formula. If anything, it is evident that the formula is designed to hurt public universities. 40% (Peer assessment score and selectivity rating) of the USNWR are relevant to academics. The remaining 60% of the equation is very easily manipulated, blows tiny/fractional differences way out of proportion and omits criteria necessary to the financing and reporting structures required of public universities. If the USNWR leveled the playing field, Cal would be ranked in the top 10 and Michigan and UVA well in the top 20.</p>
<p>i would argue that peer assessment and selectivity are the least academic part of the ranking. Retention rate, SAT scores, alumni giving rate, faculty resources, etc. are much more relevant and indicative of a quality undergraduate experience than:</p>
<p>a) what people from other schools 'feel' about your school</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>b) how 'attractive' of a place to be your school is, calculated by sheer # applied vs # accepted - NYU gets a TON of applicants by virtue of being in manhattan and thus an attractive place to be and as such maintains a fairly low acceptance rate.</p>
<p>whether or not tiny fractional differences are given excess weight is up for debate, though i would say no, as a tiny fractional difference in the arbitrary "peer assessment" score (that is, whether someone from another school is feeling on any particular day that your school is a 4.5 vs a 4.8 out of 5) are hugely magnified when that tiny fraction that is pure whim and conjecture, albeit from a vaguely labelled 'insider', is worth 40% of your total ranking.</p>