Vanderbilt has moved up one spot to #15, tied with Cornell and WashU.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/page+2
Good News. Let Vanderbilt focus strengthening its School of Engineering in World Class Level that will certainly help to move up in ranking
as well.
Moving on up.
Same old list, with a few gratuitous shuffles at top to produce “novelty” This is pure gimmickry, and US News is mired in the grip of legacy reputation thinking. No way places like Dartmouth, Brown etc compete with Northwestern/Vanderbilt/Wash U etc in overall impact at University level. Also, Johns Hopkins keeps getting outsized credit for its top Medical School. In reality, it should swap places with Vanderbilt on this list.
uhmm…I don’t think JHU should switch places. It may get a boost in reputational rankings because of that, but one must recognize that it actually really excels in A LOT of areas and no doubt is one of the strongest schools in terms of undergraduate academics (in and out of STEM- as a person interested in STEM, I’ve seen a lot of their material and I rank it “up there” even in comparison to other elites. Maybe not quite top 10 but close). And they “should” actually be more known for their undergraduate instruction in languages and things like international affairs. This is a school that isn’t really known for being a generic “overall experience” (fun with very good academics, a work hard play hard school I guess) but has really built many signature undergraduate programs. I think people unfairly underestimate JHU for the quality of its undergraduate academics outside of things pre-health related. Most of the STEM programs typically not (or less) engaged by pre-healths are also stronger than what we generally regard as “comparable” places, and as I mentioned, so are a lot of non-STEM programs. As for the Brown comment, no evidence of that. I used to wonder about them as well and would underestimate them but the fact is that Brown ranks much better globally in many/most lists than the 3 names you dropped (NU may be up there, but not WashU or Vandy). These global rankings tend to highlight “impact”, especially research impact. Highlight the shuffling (specifically the ties) but don’t make up stuff where there isn’t much evidence to support it.
Some schools are much stronger (especially at the UG level which USNews ranks) than others (including JHU) like to give them credit for and some are not as strong as their admissions profile would suggest. JHU, for example is one of the places that is much stronger than the admissions profile. I would not underestimate the strength of UG programs nor contributions beyond medicine at JHU. People also tend to write Duke off as “work hard play hard” as well because sports successes have indeed helped their prestige (along with reputation in the bio/medical sciences), but part of the reason they’ve become so good is because they have followed in the footsteps of other very elite schools and have built signature undergraduate programs (for example, they have joined the “we have excellent econ!” crowd along with HYUofC) and improved dramatically those that were not so before. While these rankings may place schools in positions for reasons other than the ones I mention, I must say that a few schools actually deserve their ranking based on those or at least something close. Often there is much more to the caliber of some of these schools than can be gauged by someone who attend(ed) another elite. Clearly the undeserved stereotype of JHU still persists (and so does Duke’s-Duke kind of still has that whph attitidude but at this point its UG academics are more than just a generic level of excellence and many are exceptionally strong in comparison to many competitors. JHU has been like that for a while).