Why is the UW ranked so high internationally but low nationally?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Washington
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<p>I'm seriously confused.</p>

<p>The University of Washington is my state university (the one where EVERYONE applies to no matter what) and to my knowledge, it's not that hard to get into. About half of my high school's senior class (~130 students) is usually always accepted, and a little less than 1/4 (~70) end up going to this school each year. </p>

<p>With that being said, it's acceptance rate is also over 50% and it's not regarded as a prestigious university AT ALL. In fact, the mentality of my school is that UW should be the back up school. No one celebrates getting into UW, no huge Facebook status is posted, and it's just not a big deal. </p>

<p>My question is (partly due to my experience): How is it possible that national lists put UW somewhere in between top 50-60 on their college rankings list while international lists puts the school at top 30? This makes no sense to me whatsoever. I'm talking 3.4, 3.5 students that are accepted to this university. I know these aren't extremely low GPAs, but for a school that is ranked TOP 30 IN THE WORLD, is this normal? </p>

<p>It's ranked higher than schools such as WashU, Brown, Rice, USC, and for a few lists it's higher than Johns Hopkins! That's impossible. How can that even be? These schools are amazing schools that are ranked much, much higher on national lists than the UW is.</p>

<p>On a side note: I applied to the UW and would really like to go there. However, I was accepted to NYU and must confirm my decision by March 11. If I accept their decision, I need to withdraw all apps, etc by this date which means I don't get to wait and find out if I got into UW.</p>

<p>I'm not going to choose based on the ranking, however... This question is just something I'm curious about because it seems really illogical to me.</p>

<p>Can anyone explain this?</p>

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<p>I think “international list” means world university rankings such as QS, THE and ARWU while domestic one is college rankings like USNWR. ROUGHLY speaking, international list is rankings of graduate (and professional) school (heavily dependent on research factors), whereas domestic one is for UG measuring quality of UG education.</p>

<p>Most of the state flagship universities show the similar ranking structure as UW; higher GR rankings than UG ones. </p>

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<p><a href=“Why is the University of Washington ranked so high in world rankings but low in national rankings? - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>Why is the University of Washington ranked so high in world rankings but low in national rankings? - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;

<p>[QOTE<em>]College choice based on rankings are not good idea. More important are your preferences, personal fit, strength of future majors and COSTS.
Anyway, UW and NYU are tier one school, meaning no worry about reputation factors as well as the strength of your future majors.
Thus, your decision is not tough. Unless your preferences and fits are strongly for NYU, go UW.[/QOTE</em>]</p>

<p>[QOTE<em>]Different rankings use different criteria for different purposes.
The THE ranking is an opinion poll of university professors around the world.
It presumably reflects opinions about the quantity or quality of academic research at world universities. The US News rankings likewise have subjective opinion poll components (the “peer” and guidance counsellor assessments), but also incorporate objective measurements believed to reflect the quality of undergraduate education (such as average class sizes, student selectivity, and graduation rates). So the results are different.[/QOTE</em>]</p>