When you say t50...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

USNWR significantly hurt their credibility when they started implicitly adjusting their rankings first to get a couple of Publics into the top 25 and then by adding social justice factors like economic mobility and Pell grant factors again designed to bump publics. That said the others are even worse.

But in the end it isn't that hard to line out ones that are obviously ridiculous and discount large moves that anyone thinking can see were caused by these adjustments rather than reality. Tufts and Middlebury didn't each drop about 15 spots in 5 years, no public is really a T20, etc. And most of all, you can't be that granular in the first place.

There’s this weird narrative that USNWR went too social justice, but the only metrics in 2025 close to what you describe are the Pell grant graduation rate and graduation performance that come to just 11%. That’s it. Nationwide 1/3 of college students are Pell recipients. It’s kind of absurd to not care one bit if 1/3 of a student body is performing more poorly than the rest because of economic factors. Not only do the bottom 1/3 count, but their being miserable would diminish the overall experience on campus for the other 2/3. I don’t agree with all of their ranks— far from it— but I don’t have to for them to be the best in the business. They just have to be better than the competition, which they are. I agree it’s odd when a school drops 15 spots over 5 years, but that happens more often and to a far greater extent (I’ve seen over 100
spots!) in other rankings. I agree it’s common for people to take rank too literally, but those who do so ignore the publication’s own advice:

“Many other factors, including some that can't be measured, should figure into your decision… Study the data that accompanies the actual rankings. You should not use the rankings as the sole basis for deciding on one school over another.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

Actual most educated parents and students look at things like programs offered, requirements for potential majors and course offerings, extracurricular opportunities, and location. Only uneducated but deeply prestige-obsessed parents fixate on things like name brand of the school or acceptance rates.

Competitive schools are competitive because students are satisfied with programs offered, requirements for potential majors and course offerings, extracurricular opportunities, and location, etc. at higher rates overall.

So are yield rate, retention rate, gradation rate, etc.
So next year for the next cycle, students look at those for reference.

100%

Correct, they will look at USNews which is what everyone does every year.

I guess once Wake Forest and others climb back to their previous spots under the new criteria, everyone will all of a sudden be good with the rankings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

DP. It is fair to point out that US News does not match the behavior of the top students. Princeton is almost always #1 in US News but most people would rather go to Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. Hopkins is tied with Caltech in US News...but not in the real world. Etc.

Mismatches between US News and behavior happen because people disagree with the US News methodology.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

USNWR significantly hurt their credibility when they started implicitly adjusting their rankings first to get a couple of Publics into the top 25 and then by adding social justice factors like economic mobility and Pell grant factors again designed to bump publics. That said the others are even worse.

But in the end it isn't that hard to line out ones that are obviously ridiculous and discount large moves that anyone thinking can see were caused by these adjustments rather than reality. Tufts and Middlebury didn't each drop about 15 spots in 5 years, no public is really a T20, etc. And most of all, you can't be that granular in the first place.

Except the top publics were already in the top 25 before these changes and some of them barely budged with the changes. But why deal in facts?

[Anonymous]

[mastodon]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

DP. It is fair to point out that US News does not match the behavior of the top students. Princeton is almost always #1 in US News but most people would rather go to Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. Hopkins is tied with Caltech in US News...but not in the real world. Etc.

Mismatches between US News and behavior happen because people disagree with the US News methodology.

Lots of kids would rather go to Princeton. And this is the problem with your whole “we get a real world result every year.” We actually don’t, because it’s messy, and it’s why you can’t answer anyone’s question about where schools fall relative to others and how your criteria should be applied.

Like 10 pages here of just absolute nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

DP. It is fair to point out that US News does not match the behavior of the top students. Princeton is almost always #1 in US News but most people would rather go to Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. Hopkins is tied with Caltech in US News...but not in the real world. Etc.

Mismatches between US News and behavior happen because people disagree with the US News methodology.

I wouldn’t expect perfect adherence even if it were a perfect ranking (it is not) because there’s no shortage of poor decision-making made even with good info and, separately, lots of the other reasonable factors they themselves say should go into consideration but can’t be ranked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

DP. It is fair to point out that US News does not match the behavior of the top students. Princeton is almost always #1 in US News but most people would rather go to Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. Hopkins is tied with Caltech in US News...but not in the real world. Etc.

Mismatches between US News and behavior happen because people disagree with the US News methodology.

The best wine at any price point is the most popular one, experts be damned? Heard of “marketing”?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

USNWR significantly hurt their credibility when they started implicitly adjusting their rankings first to get a couple of Publics into the top 25 and then by adding social justice factors like economic mobility and Pell grant factors again designed to bump publics. That said the others are even worse.

But in the end it isn't that hard to line out ones that are obviously ridiculous and discount large moves that anyone thinking can see were caused by these adjustments rather than reality. Tufts and Middlebury didn't each drop about 15 spots in 5 years, no public is really a T20, etc. And most of all, you can't be that granular in the first place.

Except the top publics were already in the top 25 before these changes and some of them barely budged with the changes. But why deal in facts?

From 2023 to 2024 some top publics moved up a lot. UCLA and Berkeley both moved from 20 to 15, Michigan moved from 25 to 21. They were in the top 25 already but those are big jumps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[mastodon]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

DP. It is fair to point out that US News does not match the behavior of the top students. Princeton is almost always #1 in US News but most people would rather go to Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. Hopkins is tied with Caltech in US News...but not in the real world. Etc.

Mismatches between US News and behavior happen because people disagree with the US News methodology.

Lots of kids would rather go to Princeton. And this is the problem with your whole “we get a real world result every year.” We actually don’t, because it’s messy, and it’s why you can’t answer anyone’s question about where schools fall relative to others and how your criteria should be applied.

Like 10 pages here of just absolute nonsense.

Some kids would rather go to Princeton but you are misinformed if you think people want to go there as much as Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. Look at the yields and acceptance rates.

[Anonymous]

US News lost any credibility it was clinging to when it put UC Merced right outside the top 50. UC Merced has a 9% acceptance rate, with precovid SAT average of 990. It's yield is also in single digits. But because it serves a largely poor population, it became a top school in the United States.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[mastodon]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

DP. It is fair to point out that US News does not match the behavior of the top students. Princeton is almost always #1 in US News but most people would rather go to Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. Hopkins is tied with Caltech in US News...but not in the real world. Etc.

Mismatches between US News and behavior happen because people disagree with the US News methodology.

Lots of kids would rather go to Princeton. And this is the problem with your whole “we get a real world result every year.” We actually don’t, because it’s messy, and it’s why you can’t answer anyone’s question about where schools fall relative to others and how your criteria should be applied.

Like 10 pages here of just absolute nonsense.

Some kids would rather go to Princeton but you are misinformed if you think people want to go there as much as Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. Look at the yields and acceptance rates.

DP. I think academia broadly agrees with USNWR on Princeton over Harvard for undergrad. Honestly I think if there were a secret vote amongst even Harvard’s own faculty Princeton might win.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:US News lost any credibility it was clinging to when it put UC Merced right outside the top 50. UC Merced has a 9% acceptance rate, with precovid SAT average of 990. It's yield is also in single digits. But because it serves a largely poor population, it became a top school in the United States.

Closer to 60th (58) but…

No, the reason Merced did so well is not because it serves a poor population.

Looking at the numbers behind the paywall and going through the methodology, it appears the main reasons Merced did well were:

- they outperformed other schools not in the top 40 on debt at graduation

- they outperformed other schools not in the top 40 on overall graduation rates relative to the rates predicted by incoming scores (still used since looking at ‘16 cohort), gpa, budget, and other characteristics

- faculty research ranked 39th

I can get disagreeing, but your understanding of their rank is off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

USNWR significantly hurt their credibility when they started implicitly adjusting their rankings first to get a couple of Publics into the top 25 and then by adding social justice factors like economic mobility and Pell grant factors again designed to bump publics. That said the others are even worse.

But in the end it isn't that hard to line out ones that are obviously ridiculous and discount large moves that anyone thinking can see were caused by these adjustments rather than reality. Tufts and Middlebury didn't each drop about 15 spots in 5 years, no public is really a T20, etc. And most of all, you can't be that granular in the first place.

There’s this weird narrative that USNWR went too social justice, but the only metrics in 2025 close to what you describe are the Pell grant graduation rate and graduation performance that come to just 11%. That’s it. Nationwide 1/3 of college students are Pell recipients. It’s kind of absurd to not care one bit if 1/3 of a student body is performing more poorly than the rest because of economic factors. Not only do the bottom 1/3 count, but their being miserable would diminish the overall experience on campus for the other 2/3. I don’t agree with all of their ranks— far from it— but I don’t have to for them to be the best in the business. They just have to be better than the competition, which they are. I agree it’s odd when a school drops 15 spots over 5 years, but that happens more often and to a far greater extent (I’ve seen over 100
spots!) in other rankings. I agree it’s common for people to take rank too literally, but those who do so ignore the publication’s own advice:

“Many other factors, including some that can't be measured, should figure into your decision… Study the data that accompanies the actual rankings. You should not use the rankings as the sole basis for deciding on one school over another.”

They dropped factors that actually matter as well. Avg class size was dropped to help public’s. Pell grant has zero to do with educational quality, but faculty with terminal degrees does; one was added, one was dropped. It adds up to about 35% of the ranking all told.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

DP. It is fair to point out that US News does not match the behavior of the top students. Princeton is almost always #1 in US News but most people would rather go to Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. Hopkins is tied with Caltech in US News...but not in the real world. Etc.

Mismatches between US News and behavior happen because people disagree with the US News methodology.

Lots of kids would rather go to Princeton. And this is the problem with your whole “we get a real world result every year.” We actually don’t, because it’s messy, and it’s why you can’t answer anyone’s question about where schools fall relative to others and how your criteria should be applied.

Like 10 pages here of just absolute nonsense.

Some kids would rather go to Princeton but you are misinformed if you think people want to go there as much as Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. Look at the yields and acceptance rates.

DP. I think academia broadly agrees with USNWR on Princeton over Harvard for undergrad. Honestly I think if there were a secret vote amongst even Harvard’s own faculty Princeton might win.

Kids like Harvard because it's the most famous elite school, MIT because it's seen as top in STEM, and Stanford because it is the best school in the west and good at tech business. It's more about the school brand and connections than academics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More educated parents and students aren't blindly following US News rankings any more. Since their last release was so heavily mocked and with availability of information about a school's outcomes and strength of majors and strength of students academic achievements, US News is a much more minor role player now than in the past.

Parents look at the cost of the school, the name brand of the school, the SAT averages of the school, the acceptance rate of the school and the outcomes of the school a lot more than some outdated magazine.

All of which are contained in....the USNews rankings! 🙂

It's a likely "first stop" for parents with other research options later. It is what it is.

No, it's missing many important factors and Contain some insignificant factors such as how many Pell grant students.
However it's still a nice reference for an initial screening.

At the end every year, we get the actual result of the collective decisions by the students.
The result is reflected in the combination of admission rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

That's why although USNWR removed factors like acceptance rate, parents and students pay good attention to it, and consider the competitive schools good schools in general.

All of the top 30 have either low or extremely low acceptance rates.

No, schools like UF, UVA, UCSD, UT have significantly higher acceptance rate than schools like Tufts, BU, Wake Forest, Northeastern, BC as students chose that way.

Acceptance rate can be manipulated (by inducing more applicants, most of the unqualified), so they correctly dropped it. It isn't the best indicator of true selectivity and quality of the enrolled student body.

Hence I said 1000 times the combination of acceptance rate, yield rate, cohort quality, retention rate, and graduation rate.

But continue to include the thing that can be manipulated? And don’t factor in what industry experts think about the quality of education taking place?

The problem with what you propose it can reward those schools where good students flock mostly because of non academic factors like location or dorms.

USNWR isn’t perfect but it’s the best option available and it’s not close.

USNWR significantly hurt their credibility when they started implicitly adjusting their rankings first to get a couple of Publics into the top 25 and then by adding social justice factors like economic mobility and Pell grant factors again designed to bump publics. That said the others are even worse.

But in the end it isn't that hard to line out ones that are obviously ridiculous and discount large moves that anyone thinking can see were caused by these adjustments rather than reality. Tufts and Middlebury didn't each drop about 15 spots in 5 years, no public is really a T20, etc. And most of all, you can't be that granular in the first place.

Except the top publics were already in the top 25 before these changes and some of them barely budged with the changes. But why deal in facts?

Because facts are friendly. I should have said top 20. No public ever cracked the top 20 prior to the changes. UCLA and UVA were the only others to ever enter the top 25. Happy to fix my small error because the argument is intact. The changes made do not reflect reality but rather were made to make a group of large universities in particular look better than they are. You sell more magazines to people interested in Michigan than Swarthmore.