<p>As a current UMD engineering student, I was a bit upset when I heard of our USNWR ranking for national universities in 2015, we were ranked at #62. What is the reason for this low number? For instance, although this is just an example, take Penn State. This school is now ranked in the 40's, however it has a higher acceptance rate, and significantly lower SAT scores. And this is not the only case, there are many schools with less 'smart', at least in terms of test scores and acceptances, students admitted. Is there some other criteria on which these schools are being graded besides the academic quality of the students? Overall I think these rankings are normally pretty accurate, but I feel like UMD is an anomaly that needs to be addressed. For me personally, I don't care so much about some arbitrary ranking, but other people's perceptions are shaped by these sorts of rankings, and I think it is unfair that the perception of my educational quality is determined by these, apparently unfounded, rankings.</p>
<p>Here is the info - look at the table for the breakdown
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/09/08/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/09/08/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights</a></p>
<p>Ranking has little to do with selectivity of admissions. But yeah, I agree it is frustrating. Just remember that the only perception of your educational quality that counts is that of potential employers, and frankly, that doesn’t seem to be an issue in the least. Maryland is very highly recruited and engineering students in particular have very good job offers/opportunities by all accounts. So, don’t sweat it.</p>
<p>If this makes you feel better, (and I do wish they would do this survey again because it’s now 4 years old, but still relevant enough for my point) read this <a href=“Best Colleges & Universities - Ranked by Job Recruiters - WSJ”>http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060</a> and note that while Maryland is #8 overall, if you look at the small table in the bottom left, you will see that engineering is #3.</p>
<p>Also found this article of interest on how to “game” the rankings…
<a href=“http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/print/#gallery-1-1”>http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/print/#gallery-1-1</a></p>
<p>“You get credit for the number of classes you have under 20 [students], so we lowered our caps on a lot of our classes to 19 just to make sure.” </p>
<p>We do pretty well at this website as well</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings/University-of-Maryland-College-Park.html”>http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings/University-of-Maryland-College-Park.html</a></p>
<p>I take all these rankings with a very large grain of salt as they each have their own methodology. But there does need to be some method of comparison.</p>