They weren’t but they can be.
Disagree. The whole point of the USNews list is to compare Universities against each other, and that requires both public and private on the list.
wrt changes, the top publics should climb in rankings since they have a more diverse pool, i.e., more folks from different backgrounds, than top privates.
well sure, USNews can use any criteria they want, but what is the value of adding ‘legacy admissions’ as a factor (other than to give HYPS some bonus points)?
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Schools that dont consider legacy could be given a bump than those schools who have a high percentage of legacy admits.
We see this on the horizon as something that may be affected by the Supreme Court ruling.
This is a great idea!
But you’re acting like those department rankings are an objective measurement of anything. In their own words, US News’ ranking of undergraduate programs are “based solely on peer assessment surveys.”
It’s just reputational. And that reputation is, in turn, generally based on things like publication output and ability to secure grant funding that get programs noticed by their peers, but generally don’t have much to do with a focus on undergraduate education.
I think that your making an assumption, without actually looking at the data. The only top public with a really good social mobility score is UCLA. UCB, Umich, and UVA don’t really have great social mobility scores at at least not much better than t25 privates.
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I certainly can’t speak to the methodology. However, I am operating under the assumption that US News sees some value in its rankings of individual departments. If it does, then an institution with better departments should be ranked ahead of a school with lesser departments.
I’m curious about what happens to “Faculty Resources” as it currently comprises 20% of the ranking, and it seems that 13% of it is being removed.
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USN ranks relatively few undergraduate programs, however.
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The value is that it gets clicks/revenue for them.
Other than that, it’s essentially a popularity contest with no evaluative criteria.
Does this disprove my point? I’m confused. UCLA is 46, UCB is 105, Umich is 326, UVA is 361. I could keep going, but the criteria is “elite,” so I wouldn’t consider any more than those 4.
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A big yawn here. USNews has to keep shaking things up to keep the public interested in the rankings and buying their product.
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However, if the comparison is elite private universities, the latter do not do so well. Filtering by admission rate <= 30% in the USNWR social mobility ranking:
| USNWR social mobility rank | Public | Private |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | UCI | |
| 15 | UCSB | |
| 46 | UCLA | |
| 75 | University of Florida | |
| 105 | UCB | |
| 140 | NYU | |
| 160 | UNC-CH | |
| 186 | University of Texas at Austin | Princeton |
| 197 | Columbia | |
| 209 | Emory | |
| 209 | USC | |
| 242 | MIT | |
| 250 | Harvard | |
| 263 | Brown | |
| 270 | Cornell | |
| 270 | Yale | |
| 282 | CWRU | |
| 282 | Stanford | |
| 296 | Northeastern | |
| 303 | Boston University | |
| 303 | Northwestern | |
| 303 | Rice | |
| 313 | Caltech | |
| 313 | Dartmouth | |
| 313 | University of Pennsylvania | |
| 326 | JHU | |
| 326 | Michigan | |
| 326 | Vanderbilt | |
| 339 | Duke | |
| 339 | Georgetown | |
| 339 | Tufts | |
| 353 | University of Miami | |
| 361 | Boston College | |
| 361 | CMU | |
| 361 | Virginia | |
| 361 | Villanova | |
| 372 | Georgia Tech | |
| 372 | Chicago | |
| 395 | Notre Dame | |
| 395 | WUStL | |
| 412 | Wake Forest | |
| 432 | Tulane |
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I’d love for Harvard to drop down to 250, so that people will leave in droves to UCI or something, and my grandkids can get into Harvard easily.
The thing is, usually, the guys that have the money (endowment) will likely offer the most quality / pleasant experience.
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Class size was always a big issue for me and I think it should still be included in the criteria. I transferred from a school with class sizes in the hundreds, to one where the largest classes were 50-60 students. It made all the difference in the world.
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I do not think US News distinguishes between a class size of 50-60 vs. 500-1000+.
From the US News ranking criteria here: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/ranking-criteria-and-weights
Class size: This assesses the ability of students to engage with their instructors in class. It used data schools reported to U.S. News that aligned with the 2021-2022 Common Data Set instructions for reporting class size.
Schools receive the most credit in this index for their proportions of undergraduate classes with fewer than 20 students. Classes with 20 to 29 students score second highest, 30 to 39 students third highest and 40 to 49 students fourth highest. Classes that have 50 or more students receive no credit. U.S. News has not disclosed to any schools the weights assigned to different intervals within the index.
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Right now, there is a mad frenzy in the admissions office of a certain north eastern university. 
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Re: your point about Michigan having to move >5 spots – when they used the accurate (not self reported) data for Columbia, it dropped from rank 2 to rank 18. Coincidentally, it was also the only Ivy to see a drop in applications this cycle, of about 5-10% (iirc). I believe it is very possible for even double-digit motion, as @merc81 has already suggested.
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