Hey guys:
What do you think the predictions will be for the 2017 rankings? Here are my top 20:
Penn State possibly 43,45 or again 47.
UNCW will rise in the Southern regional rankings. They’ll see that #16 is too low for us. And maybe they’ll finally give us an extra paragraph in the “school info” section. 
Why do you have Stanford there?
Either way…it’s become musical chairs.
The statistical near-certainty within the National Universities category is that the schools currently ranked in the top 19 (rankings 1-18) will remain as the top 19 (excepting a methodology change). The five point score difference to the 20th school is unlikely to be bridged in the near future, either upward or downward. Similarly, the top 13 schools (those currently ranked 1-12) are likely to remain as the top 13.
It’s also interesting that 20-29 are extremely close in point value, especially 23-29. Given close point values, they’re somewhat likely to swap around and shift up and down in my opinion. I also think it’s really strange that, among the top 20 universities, only one of them is a public university and the rest being private. I personally wouldn’t call wake forest comparable to UVA or Michigan; I think publics get undervalued
I’m interested to see where Villanova makes its debut as a national university. Seems to come at a time when the school has tremendous momentum. 45-ish, maybe a little higher?
@guitar321 agreed. I also believe UNC Chapel Hill deserves to be in the top 20 as well. They’re better than Wake Forest for sure.
Ivy free by 2018! I may be wrong though.
@Middleman68 Villanova will be really interesting. I think 50’s makes sense. Not quite in the RPI/Tulane/Lehigh/Northeastern/BU group, but somewhere around GW/Miami/WPI/Syracuse/SMU/Fordham
I would’ve thought Villanova would have been around the 30s or 40s. The average stats of admitted students is much higher than you would assume for a school with a 40% acceptance rate.
By the standardized scoring of their students, Villanova recently placed 86th when compared to all schools nationally. That’s high by a reasonable standard, but it wouldn’t appear sufficient, by itself, to strongly drive its ranking position.
The range was from 1310-1440 and a 31-33 this year so I’m pretty surprised its at 86th.
Berkeley 19
Georgetown 20
Rice 21
For LACs Pomona #1 over Williams–yes, finally. What does Williams have that Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury and Pomona don’t?
I’d also like to see UCLA moved up. As the most applied to school in the US, it’s doing something right. Surely, its better than placement in the low 30’s.
@preppedparent I’d be stunned to see Pomona jump from a four-way tie for fourth to first. I agree that Williams an Amherst offer nothing other than name-recognition over Middlebury and Bowdoin. Not sure Colby gets included in that same group.
According to the CDS past year (which I believe will be used this year), Villanova’s mid ranges are:
CR: 590-690
M: 610-710
W: 590-690
ACT C: 29-32
Compare to UMiami (51):
CR: 590-690
M: 610-700
W: 580-680
ACT C: 28-32
Very comparable. I expect it will fall right around 50.
@urbanslaughter: << I’d be stunned to see Pomona jump from a four-way tie for fourth to first. >> Why, Pomona has taken the top spot in Forbes’ List of American top colleges for 2 years running before being replaced by Stanford earlier this month.
To me it wouldn’t be a surprise that a school that topped another list could top this one too. Williams now is second on the Forbes list, so I can see Pomona and Williams battling it out for the top spot on USNWR. I don’t see it as fourth, and I definitely don’t see Colby in those tight ranks either.
The two rankings use very different methodology, or else Pomona would have been #1 USNWR already.