So, I guess US News should just present an alphabetical listing. On second thought, alphabetical might not be the way to go as it would disadvantage schools that start with “Univestity”. Random listing it is!
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I think there is an argument for academic measurements (rankings?) at the undergraduate department or major level, showing a score for each factor evaluated. Harder to misrepresent the granular detail when the department or major being measured is a manageable size.
Top public universities have a lot more in common with top private universities than not. “Public” university is not like a public high school, that is free to all on an equal basis. And most private high schools, while offering a bit of financial aid, are mostly full pay.
The reality, from the student’s perspective, is that wealthy top privates will offer enough financial aid to lower income students to make them cheaper to attend than their public. For middle income students, it’s kind of a toss up. The bigger difference is that the in-state public offers a lower cost college option to high income families.
From the University’s perspective, top publics get a small fraction of their budget (usually 20% or less) primarily to offer that tuition discount to in-state students. All of the fancy facilties and research centers are either funded by donors, grants, or debt, just like a fully private university. For out-of-state students, publics and privates are really equivalent.
I think of public vs. private as just two different styles of education. Public is a high-volume, more cost-effective model (a VW or Chevy), versus what most privates offer - more exclusivity and luxury, at a cost (Audi or Cadillac). The actual content of the education that can be found at either is not that different, with the greater variety of courses and subjects at a big public that can sometimes offset the advantages of privates.
So I think it makes perfect sense to rank them together.
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I mean it’s not just the aid that top private universities offer that differentiates them, surely?
It’s the people in your class - they’re going to be really smart, really wealthy or really connected and there’s overlap between them.
I know of at least 3 billionaires’ kids who are currently at Harvard (ranging from a man worth $1 billion to a man worth $7 billion).
You sure know alot of billionaires!
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As if I know them personally lol. I said I know of.
Their kids’ profiles were on my ‘suggested posts’ section in Instagram so I googled their surnames as they sounded familiar and their Dads’ Forbes profiles came up. I corroborated that they were indeed the kids of the billionaires in question.
But I’m not sure how rankings would take into account the number of ‘connected’ people at the institution when I can imagine many people go to top colleges for the network (among other things).
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Are we really suggesting it’s a good idea to rank colleges based on how many billionaire scions attend? Only on CC. 
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The relative affluence of a student body does not necessarily indicate more academic preparedness as compared to a more balanced student body at the secondary level.
The most academically rigorous private grade schools typically have financial aid budgets that enable socioeconomic diversity to be considered along with academic proficiency. This is similar to top 10 USNWR ranked universities and LACs.
Certain competitive schools within higher ranked public universities outrank entire T20 private colleges based on the rankings as they are made now. The changes may or may not impact this.
So you are researching and posting about the families of kids who attend Harvard? 
Newsflash-There are alot of kids from wealthy families at Harvard! Film at 11!
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Sure, but researching the kids of these families? Seems more than a bit stalkerish.
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Michigan of course. 
LSA has about 40-50 programs in the Top 10 and then there’s Top 10 schools like Kinesiology, Ross Business, Engineering, Nursing, etc.
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Knocking what school out? Assuming US News as the brnchmark.
US News does change their formula most years. However, I expect these changes have little to do with trying to accommodate feedback in how to make a more accurate ranking of “best colleges” and more to do with selling magazines/subscriptions. If the rankings are the same every year, there is little motivation for the past customers to purchase the new rankings. If something is new and different, there is more motivation to purchase and see how things have changed.
Alumni giving is only weighted at 3% and has relatively little impact. My guess is removing alumni giving and class size has more to do with these being categories in which colleges are more likely to be caught lying. Following the recent Columbia debacle, USNWR has become more sensitive to these types of misrepresentation. Several other colleges have been caught misrepresenting these stats besides just Columbia, including some that are frequently discussed on here. For example, as discussed at https://www.berkeleyside.org/2019/07/28/uc-berkeley-kicked-off-the-u-s-news-world-report-rankings-of-best-u-s-colleges, Berkeley was removed from the 2019 US News ranking due to listing a higher alumni giving rate than actual.
In any case, the post you quoted defined what I meant by “arbitrary” in the following sentence. I don’t mean the weightings are selected randomly. I mean that they have no validity or verification that they accurately reflect “best college.” USNWR is a business, and I expect that they choose weightings that result in the success of that business via a larger number of sales/subscriptions. The names USNWR readers expect to see on top (output of formula looks right), with minor tweaks from year to year (reason to buy another) = more sales/subscriptions.
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There are several different issues to break down.
It is not a simple fact the “top colleges” are private. Instead it depends on how you define “top college.” For example, USNWR ranks both Berkeley and Washington among the top 6 in their best colleges in the world list (see https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings ). Washington is #6 in the world, but is not among the top 50 in the US. The reason why Washington does so much better in the global rankings, is because they use different criteria that focuses more on research and less on things that correlated with endowment per student. Perhaps you don’t care at all about research, but some students do. I’d expect the more relevant metric is what is a “top college” for you. Which college is best in the criteria that is important to you. I expect the answer will look very different than any rankings list published on a website.
USNWR loves their 1=marginal / 5 = distinguished survey. Their original rankings were 100% based on this type of survey, and they have always maintained the output of this survey as the core of their rankings, with a higher % than any other single criteria. Given that USNWR removed some categories in the current ranking, I would not be surprised if the weighting given to the survey is increased in the current ranking.
That is not the only category in which some publics do well compared to highly selective privates. For example, USNWR said they are going to increase weighting given to graduating students from different backgrounds. If they consider enrollment of students with different backgrounds, including things like lower SES, and compare expected graduation rate (based on scores and income of admitted student), then I expect the results could look quite different. As an example, the Chetty study found the following colleges were best at social mobility, meaning the largest portion of graduates are in a notably higher income percentile than parents. The top USNWR private colleges do not rank as well because most students are from top 10% income families, so little room to move up.
1 . Vaughn
2. CUNY
3. CUNY Baruch
4. Texas A&M
5. Cal State LA
…
2096 (bottom 2%) – Princeton
We’re going way, way off topic here but I don’t really see that as stalking them lol.
Instagram’s search page suggested their photos to me because I’ve liked similar photos of friends who went to Harvard in the past.
I then clicked on those suggested photos because I found the photos those people were posting visually appealing, recognized their surnames and did a google search to confirm my suspicions.
In any case, the point I was making is that those kind of kids probably aren’t going to be attending a state school.
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Meaning, you expect them to attend a college above their qualifications where admission can be bought by huge donations by their parents? (the D in ALDC hooks)
Tied at #10 with Duke and Northwestern. 
“I mean that they have no validity or verification that they accurately reflect “best college.”
Perhaps not for you, but they have ‘validity’ for USNews and the millions of folks that buy their magazine. Do they lean towards stuff that they can justify and that also sells pubs? Of course.
btw; folks have been claiming about alumni giving favoring rich private schools for many years – its much easier to make a donation when you come from a full pay family as opposed to working 2 jobs to buy books, way before the stuff with Columbia and Berkeley.
They’re hoping and believing rather than being logical. Umich is likely dropping in the rankings this year when looking at the social mobility ranking. And many schools outside the top 10 have top 10 programs. WashU and Vandy have top 10 med schools. Emory has top 5 nursing and public health. Some people only focus on STEM ( mainly engineering), thus disregarding the other top schools as “overrated”.
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