I checked the U.S news ranking and was wondering why Boston University is ranked equally as UC Irvine. I checked BU’s website and the average act is like 32 and gpa is A- average. UC irvine’s average sat is about 1700-1800 and they are both ranked 39. isn’t us news the website where people use and trust the most as school’s ranking? Is Boston University underrated? I know BU’s ranking has been going up every year but I was just curious.
Pretty sure 39 isn’t that low lol
You’ve just discovered a reason (among many) not to rely on rankings. Look around some more and you’ll find other rankings that order colleges differently. And in the real world, reputation and prestige will depend on region and industry.
The answer is in the U.S. News and World Report methodology used in the ranking:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
Graduation and retention rates (22.5 percent)
Undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent)
Faculty resources (20 percent)
Student selectivity (12.5 percent)
Financial resources (10 percent)
Graduation rate performance (7.5 percent)
Alumni giving rate (5 percent)
If you look at the rankings section here, you’ll see that they’re vastly different and rankings depend on what they’re taking into account.
http://colleges.startclass.com/compare/272-1895/University-of-California-Irvine-vs-Boston-University
Rankings are useful to the (non-existent) vanilla applicant who agrees with magazine editors’ criteria.
According to US News, BU has improved from 60 in 2009 to 39 in 2016.
http://publicuniversityhonors.com/2015/06/13/u-s-news-national-university-rankings-2008-present/
(and see post #3 above).
Yep, ranking is silly and doesn’t mean much. BU didn’t participate in ranking when I attended, because the former President thought rankings were bullsh*t and refused to play that game. BU changed their mind in the late 2000s, so now they play the game. There are all sorts of ways to game rankings, including encouraging more and more people to apply (see: increase marketing/recruiting budget) which impacts your acceptance rate and yield. You can offer generous aid to high stat students to lure them away from “better” schools (see: Northeastern’s strategy). You can have this whole “start second semester abroad” and “guaranteed transfer” options–those stats don’t count toward rankings (so you can still accept students with “lower stats” without hurting your rank). BU and Northeastern do this.
Anyway, 39 isn’t low! I’m perfectly happy to have bragging rights on BU now that they rank, but I also know the rankings ultimately don’t matter. And SATs are a terrible metric for determining the quality of a school… some very smart people have “low” SAT scores and some very good schools accept those people.