My personal congratulations, @franko5150. Tulane has an excellent history department. I think you will enjoy it a lot.
As FC explains above, that’s why the 6 year grad rate metric has such an extreme lag effect.
For the current USNWR rankings, the most recent available data on 6 year outcomes was for the kids who first started college in Fall 2007. Then USNWR averages grad rate over four classes. So now they are reaching back to kids who started college in Fall 2004. In Tulane’s case, that matters since Katrina was Fall 2005.
So the data baked into the current rankings are the kids who were freshman and returning sophomores when Katrina hit. Plus the kids who showed up the two years after, when the school and Nola would still have been a mess.
The class that started in 2008 indicates the new normal – 82% were expected to graduate and 83% did graduate. That year will first be included in the USNWR rankings that will come out in Fall 2015. The Katrina classes won’t be completely out of the data until the rankings come out in Fall 2018. 13 years after the hurricane…
USNWR rankings released today…as predicted by previous posts, Tulane jumped immensely…from 54 to 41 this year.
Closing this thread as it has now been asked and answered. - Fallenchemist*