2026 US News College Rankings

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:On Tuesday, June 17, U.S. News will release the 2025-2026 Best Global Universities rankings, focusing on academic research and reputation. This ranking allows students to see how universities stack up against the global competition. Students can use these rankings to compare universities – including U.S. colleges – globally, regionally and within their own country, as well as by field of study.

Global rankings based on research don’t have liberal arts or undergrad focused universities ranked high for obvious reasons.

You need to know the difference when assessing undergrad education vs grad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Magazine rankings are getting less relevant.

We have real ranking/evaluation by the people every year.

It's reflected in the combination of acceptance rate + yield rate + cohort quality + retention rate + graduation rate.

They are real data. If you want to see how schools really ranked, look at those data.

Based on acceptance rate, one would think Oxford is on par with U of Miami….

lol!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It will be back to 2020 IMO( released fall 2019)

The major difference between 2018/2020 is Columbia. I don’t think it can be #3.

2018 list makes a lot of sense, it’s the one I keep using for closer-to-real ranking.

Their 2018 liberal arts college ranking also makes sense. Each school is more or less at their right place +- 3.

+1

This was the last year of rankings based mostly on meaningful factors.

Someone mentioned Middlebury’s ranking drop above. The drop was driven by the addition socioeconomic factors and then last time around by changes in how FTE were computed which artificially dropped their academic spending number. Someone on CC broke the whole thing down last year when it happened. It hit another school hard as well, maybe W&L?

So why didn't it affect Middlebury's peers the same way? Sounds like a bunch of excuses for Middlebury's smaller financial resources, over enrollment issues, and ballooning deficit. Its budget issues have been outlined by the college itself as an outlier. DEI is not why Middlebury has precipitously dropped.

You're back. I remember a thread a little bit ago where someone dismantled you and your nonsense. Hopefully they will arrive to do it once again but I do remember the gist.

They overenrolled one year and then the poster showed the return to norm.
They don't have a ballooning deficit, they do have an ongoing deficit because of Monterey.
Grinnell suffered the exact same drop and Wesleyan dropped as well.

We know that you have an abnormal hate for Middlebury but really you are just too much.

I’m not PP but I’m not sure why the Middlebury boosters continue to insist that things aren’t true that even the school’s administrators will admit to. This is from the president, provost, and CFO: https://www.middlebury.edu/announcements/announcements/2025/04/budget-our-way-forward#the-latest-figures

“At that time, we explained that we’re projecting a $14.1 million deficit this fiscal year, notably higher than our $8.9 million projection from October… Looking forward, we anticipate a similar challenge next year, though we expect that the College will carry a larger portion of the deficit compared with the Institute or Schools.

We want to emphasize that the deficit we’re addressing in this message is at the College. At MIIS we continue to pursue the four-year plan to turn around enrollments.

Carrying a deficit every June 30, as we’ve done for too long, is too great a weight, one that eventually will hamper our ability to deliver on our mission. Our deficits are continually an outlier among our NESCAC peers, which all operate profitably, experiencing only occasional downturns.”

Why do they have such a bad deficit problem?

If I was a betting man, I'd bet that Middlebury and MIIS decouple within the next couple of years. It's dragging down the undergraduate college. Middlebury's new president starts in two weeks. Let's see what he does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It will be back to 2020 IMO( released fall 2019)

The major difference between 2018/2020 is Columbia. I don’t think it can be #3.

2018 list makes a lot of sense, it’s the one I keep using for closer-to-real ranking.

Their 2018 liberal arts college ranking also makes sense. Each school is more or less at their right place +- 3.

+1

This was the last year of rankings based mostly on meaningful factors.

Someone mentioned Middlebury’s ranking drop above. The drop was driven by the addition socioeconomic factors and then last time around by changes in how FTE were computed which artificially dropped their academic spending number. Someone on CC broke the whole thing down last year when it happened. It hit another school hard as well, maybe W&L?

So why didn't it affect Middlebury's peers the same way? Sounds like a bunch of excuses for Middlebury's smaller financial resources, over enrollment issues, and ballooning deficit. Its budget issues have been outlined by the college itself as an outlier. DEI is not why Middlebury has precipitously dropped.

You're back. I remember a thread a little bit ago where someone dismantled you and your nonsense. Hopefully they will arrive to do it once again but I do remember the gist.

They overenrolled one year and then the poster showed the return to norm.
They don't have a ballooning deficit, they do have an ongoing deficit because of Monterey.
Grinnell suffered the exact same drop and Wesleyan dropped as well.

We know that you have an abnormal hate for Middlebury but really you are just too much.

I’m not PP but I’m not sure why the Middlebury boosters continue to insist that things aren’t true that even the school’s administrators will admit to. This is from the president, provost, and CFO: https://www.middlebury.edu/announcements/announcements/2025/04/budget-our-way-forward#the-latest-figures

“At that time, we explained that we’re projecting a $14.1 million deficit this fiscal year, notably higher than our $8.9 million projection from October… Looking forward, we anticipate a similar challenge next year, though we expect that the College will carry a larger portion of the deficit compared with the Institute or Schools.

We want to emphasize that the deficit we’re addressing in this message is at the College. At MIIS we continue to pursue the four-year plan to turn around enrollments.

Carrying a deficit every June 30, as we’ve done for too long, is too great a weight, one that eventually will hamper our ability to deliver on our mission. Our deficits are continually an outlier among our NESCAC peers, which all operate profitably, experiencing only occasional downturns.”

Why do they have such a bad deficit problem?

If I was a betting man, I'd bet that Middlebury and MIIS decouple within the next couple of years. It's dragging down the undergraduate college. Middlebury's new president starts in two weeks. Let's see what he does.

I agree. If the current 4 year turnaround plan for MIIS doesn't gain traction in the next year or so it would make sense for the new president to spin it out in some manner. Its an interesting program but it is a distraction to Middlebury's core mission and there do not seem to be many synergies that require it to remain part of Middlebury.