Do US News Rankings Have any Impact on Admissions?

[Anonymous]

My kids don’t even look at the U.S. News rankings. They use sites line Naviance, collegevine, and unigo.

Employers and grad schools have set views of colleges that don’t change from year to year as U.S. News does yet another reshuffling. The one factor I’ve seen that changes recruiting patterns is where company leadership is sending their kids. That’s why I find it humorous when people criticize some private college as being a rich kid school, that is actually a positive attribute.

[Anonymous]

Of course it does.

[Anonymous]

Back in the olden days, before the internet gave prospective students and their parents a surfeit of information about colleges, sure, US News was relevant.

Now, not so much.

[Anonymous]

Look at how few news articles have been written about this latest US News ranking. In the past, there would be dozen and dozens of mainstream media articles.

What do we hear now? Crickets...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look at how few news articles have been written about this latest US News ranking. In the past, there would be dozen and dozens of mainstream media articles.

What do we hear now? Crickets...

Why do you even try to post nonsense? Google USNWR rankings and news.Thousands of articles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids don’t even look at the U.S. News rankings. They use sites line Naviance, collegevine, and unigo.

Employers and grad schools have set views of colleges that don’t change from year to year as U.S. News does yet another reshuffling. The one factor I’ve seen that changes recruiting patterns is where company leadership is sending their kids. That’s why I find it humorous when people criticize some private college as being a rich kid school, that is actually a positive attribute.

Goody for your kids. Anyone in Higher Ed can tell you USNWR had a huge market effect

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:US News is very important. I see it in my job searches (top 60 school) and my kids (top 15).

Especially if non-Ivy, Stanford, or Duke, Chicago.

Ivy really gives you a leg up whether that Ivy is 11 or 13. Ivy is Ivy.

People who claim not to care are those (1) who didn't go to one, (2) whose kids can't get in, (3) don't want to pay for private colleges (or can't afford to).

Ivy is Ivy. The world is an arms race.

Went to Princeton and Stanford (GSB). Have not seen it matter. I went in tech (Google) and there are people around me with no name degrees. You're generalizing quite a bit.

Even the prestige industries like consulting and Finance go beyond rankings. It's not like they give someone at school X a leg up over school Y simply due to rank. Top 30 is top 30 etc. In my case, top 100 is top 100.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids don’t even look at the U.S. News rankings. They use sites line Naviance, collegevine, and unigo.

Employers and grad schools have set views of colleges that don’t change from year to year as U.S. News does yet another reshuffling. The one factor I’ve seen that changes recruiting patterns is where company leadership is sending their kids. That’s why I find it humorous when people criticize some private college as being a rich kid school, that is actually a positive attribute.

Goody for your kids. Anyone in Higher Ed can tell you USNWR had a huge market effect

It didn’t last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course it does.

+1
Lots of willful denial on this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:US News is very important. I see it in my job searches (top 60 school) and my kids (top 15).

Especially if non-Ivy, Stanford, or Duke, Chicago.

Ivy really gives you a leg up whether that Ivy is 11 or 13. Ivy is Ivy.

People who claim not to care are those (1) who didn't go to one, (2) whose kids can't get in, (3) don't want to pay for private colleges (or can't afford to).

Ivy is Ivy. The world is an arms race.

I went to an Ivy and T10, same with dh, and couldn’t disagree more. It’s people who didn’t go to these schools who overrate them, particularly first generation immigrants.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look at how few news articles have been written about this latest US News ranking. In the past, there would be dozen and dozens of mainstream media articles.

What do we hear now? Crickets...

Every college (at least within the top 75 or so) has mentioned their ranking on their websites. States are discussing where their universities fall in the rankings. We all know this.

[Anonymous]

I think it's a lot LESS important for Ivy schools - everyone knows where they rank, year after year. It's all the other schools that are more interesting and which most people are researching.

[Anonymous]

US News Rankings matter a lot unfortunately.

We all know UC Merced in the top 60 is ridiculous. As are the other five UCs in the top 50.

It's just silly season.

I'll give you Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, and UVA as good schools for graduate programs. .

But no way they're better than Vanderbilt, Rice, Dartmouth, CMU, Brown, Notre Dame, Chicago, Georgetown, Cornell, Columbia, Williams, Harvey Mudd, Bowdoin, West Point, Pomona, and Annapolis for undergrad.

The salivating for public colleges has destroyed the validity of US News.

[Anonymous]

This thread is from 2023. As you can see, the the number of applications to the private universities downgraded in the 2024 rankings were not at all affected. in fact, the number of applications rose. So you have one data point that the US news ranking did not matter. It could be because nobody believed a methodology that moved a state school 50 points up in one year.

Fast forward to the 2025 rankings, the methodology changed slightly, and the ordinal ranking has again shifted. Some of the privates recovered and the state schools declined.

So, the lesson here is to trust your own judgment, the well established schools no matter their ranking will do well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread is from 2023. As you can see, the the number of applications to the private universities downgraded in the 2024 rankings were not at all affected. in fact, the number of applications rose. So you have one data point that the US news ranking did not matter. It could be because nobody believed a methodology that moved a state school 50 points up in one year.

Fast forward to the 2025 rankings, the methodology changed slightly, and the ordinal ranking has again shifted. Some of the privates recovered and the state schools declined.

So, the lesson here is to trust your own judgment, the well established schools no matter their ranking will do well.

Give it time.