Its computer science program is so underrated. Sorry but udub should be higher in the us news rankings.
Not everything is about acceptance rate
It’s ranked 16 in the world for CS by QS. Doesn’t sound underrated to me.
US News doesn’t rank computer science programs. It does rank computer engineering and puts UW at #12. They put UW overall at #54 which is a high ranking too. How high do you think it should be?
@bouders: USNews does indeed rank CS (though at the grad level) and has UW 6th:
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings
Thanks @PurpleTitan I looked for that and couldn’t find it.
It is a fine school. I would spend time worrying about rankings.
US News ranks UW 54th out of over 220 ranked (and many more unranked) “national” universities.
That’s fairly high.
Here are the ranking criteria and weights:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/ranking-criteria-and-weights
US News doesn’t consider the strength of individual departments.
Wisconsin, UIUC, William & Mary, Michigan, Berkeley, the Ivies, etc., all rank higher based on some combination of greater selectivity and financial resources, smaller class sizes, better graduation/retention rates, stronger undergraduate reputations (according to surveys), etc. For example, at UW, about 38% of classes have fewer than 20 students. At #32 William and Mary, the figure is 49%. At #1 Princeton, it’s over 70%.
Better question: Why are you obsessed with rankings? They’re subjective, anyway.
If strength of individual departments is considered, Washington does very well:
http://publicuniversityhonors.com/rankings-academic-departments-private-elites-vs-publics/
(Note “reputation rank” of 33.)
In 2011, UW was ranked 41 in US News. Many public universities have slipped in US News since then.
http://publicuniversityhonors.com/2016/09/18/average-u-s-news-rankings-for-126-universities-2010-1017/
It will be interesting to see if UW’s rank rebounds a little after its acceptance rate decreased from 55% to 45% between 2014 and 2016 and its enrolled middle 50% ACT range rose to 26-32. The UW has also received a lot of private financial support in recent years (e.g., from the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, Paul Allen, Amazon, Google, etc.), which might affect the “financial resources” component of the US News methodology. http://cae.org/images/uploads/pdf/VSE-2016-Press-Release.pdf
OP, there are many ways to “rank” universities. Each can be criticized for the factors and weights they use and their degree of subjectivity.
Some combine several ranking systems, such as:
https://plexuss.com/ranking/listing?sort=plexuss&order=asc&page=2
Some include research quantity, quality and impact in the ranking methodology, such as:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings?page=2
http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2016.html
http://nturanking.lis.ntu.edu.tw/DataPage/OverallRanking.aspx?y=2016
http://www.webometrics.info/en/world
http://cwur.org/2016.php
See also http://cwur.org/media.php and related article http://www.washington.edu/news/2017/04/03/uw-lands-at-no-9-with-45-subjects-ranked-in-the-top-10-in-center-for-world-university-rankings-inaugural-subject-list/
Some include the results of “reputation” surveys, such as:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2017/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/50/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats
Some focus on one area of study, such as:
http://csrankings.org/
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2017/subject-ranking/computer-science#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats
As all of these rankings show and many of the above posters have noted, Washington is highly regarded in the US and around the world (despite slipping in the US News National University Ranking in recent years) and is considered among the very top schools for computer science. In other words, if you like the school, don’t let the current US News ranking deter you from applying or from enrolling if you are accepted.