<p>Example:</p>
<p>US News: #4
Forbes: #20-ish</p>
<p>Chicago was actually at the top of the Forbes list a few years ago, and then I guess Forbes changed their methodology and Chicago fell a lot.</p>
<p>To answer your question, different undergraduate rankings weigh different factors arbitrarily, and most undergraduate ranking methodologies are established with a set ranking already in mind. For instance, US News weighs graduation rate extremely and irrationally heavily because everyone who gets into HYP graduates from HYP, and hence HYP will be at the top of the list, corresponding to US News’ preconceived notions. I haven’t looked at Forbes’ methodology in a while, but I’ve heard that they use a lot of sketchy measures in their ranking like online professor ratings.</p>
<p>Most of the global university rankings, on the other hand, use concrete measures and are much more dependable. Times Higher Education, The Shanghai-Jiaotong rankings, and QS World Universities all have UChicago as being ranked between 9th and 11th in the world and 6th-8th in the US, with Chicago usually in the same rankings class as Princeton, Yale, and Columbia. All of the major MBA rankings (US News, Forbes, the Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek) rank Booth between 1st and 4th in the US, giving Booth the #1 average ranking among MBA programs with Harvard/Stanford occupying #2/#3. The UChicago Law School is almost ubiquitously ranked between 4th and 5th in the US together with Columbia.</p>
<p>The difference between global university rankings and college rankings is that the former usually puts forth a reasonable effort to provide a quality ranking of the best universities in the world based on research output and professor/student success rates. College rankings are just there to catch media attention and sell magazines, so there’s going to be a whole lot more variation.</p>
<p>The rankings uchicago does badly in usually give a lot of weight to the payscale rankings. UChicago was like #4 in forbes two years ago before the rankings’ editor changed and decided to weigh student awards (Rhodes, Cambridge, etc.) less and give a greater weight to the payscale rankings to “measure outcomes.” UChicago seems to do badly on the payscale ranking since they don’t account for people with graduate degrees and UChicago has had a historically academic bent (I’m sure this will change soon considering the changes that have occured in the college though). This might be a bit reductive but I think it’s one of the main reasons. </p>
<p>Just a note: one of the Shanghai-Jiaotong’s ranking’s metrics is “Nobel Prizes and Field Medals won over the last century.” The ranking looks much different without that metric.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.shanghairanking.com/Alternative_Ranking_Excluding_Award_Factor/Excluding_Award_Factor2014.html”>http://www.shanghairanking.com/Alternative_Ranking_Excluding_Award_Factor/Excluding_Award_Factor2014.html</a></p>
<p>Laches: The problem with using Payscale in the rankings is that the most popular metric used, mid-career salary, is based on the success of graduates who graduated 20 years ago. In Chicago’s case, it would measure those graduating in 1994, when the College was a much, much less successful place than it currently is. </p>