USNWR Top 10 Leaked

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are we satisfied that US news is clearly a bit more stable and based in reality of what schools are prestigious.

It’s not a stable ranking at all. They deliberately change it every year.

They deliberately shook it up to benefit large publics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone else think it is weird that Hopkins is tied with Caltech?

Why not Northwestern or Duke by that same token?

I mean Hopkins has humanities and is way more well rounded than Caltech

But it is no match for Caltech at what Caltech excels at

so what? Hopkins is higher ranked than most of the other top 10 for engineering and stem. And it wildly outranks caltech at social sciences and humanities.

You want to rank the top 10 Hopkins humanities department by itself?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Embargoed means it still has time to change right? I think a more reasonable list would go:

1. Princeton
2. MIT
3. Harvard
3. Stanford
5. Yale
6. Caltech
6. Duke
8. Johns Hopkins
8. Northwestern
10. Penn

Well sheeit, if we're going to do that then I'd say:

1. MIT
2. Stanford
3. Harvard
3. Cal Tech
5. Princeton
6. Duke
6. Johns Hopkins
8. Yale
8. Penn
10. Brown

We found the Brown alum who was rejected by Northwestern !

Kids at Brown don't care about Northwestern.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Embargoed means it still has time to change right? I think a more reasonable list would go:

1. Princeton
2. MIT
3. Harvard
3. Stanford
5. Yale
6. Caltech
6. Duke
8. Johns Hopkins
8. Northwestern
10. Penn

Well sheeit, if we're going to do that then I'd say:

1. MIT
2. Stanford
3. Harvard
3. Cal Tech
5. Princeton
6. Duke
6. Johns Hopkins
8. Yale
8. Penn
10. Brown

We found the Brown alum who was rejected by Northwestern !

Kids at Brown don't care about Northwestern.

Oh but they do. For finance bros and stem kids, Brown is seen as an easier admit and not as good as Northwestern—so many kids who get deferred or rejected from ED at Penn Wharton or engineering or M&T(insanely popular among males from wealthy families) “settle” for Brown or Dartmouth in RD, and often do not get into Northwestern RD but would prefer it over Brown if they did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing is for sure, Brown was way overrated at #9 last year. Bad for many stem majors.

+1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So apparently someone at the Daily Pennsylvanian (the undergrad newspaper at Penn) was able to get their hands on the embargoed U.S. News & World Report college rankings for 2025. They posted a story about it, listing the top 10 schools:

https://www.thedp.com/article/2024/09/penn-princeton-mit-us-news-rankings-drop

1. Princeton
2. MIT
3. Harvard
4. Yale
5. Stanford
6. Caltech
6. Duke
6. Johns Hopkins
6. Northwestern
10. Penn

Thoughts?

US News got it right this time. This is the most reasonable top ten ranking of universities that I have ever seen.

Agreed. I'd swap out Hopkins for Chicago, but otherwise this looks about right to me.

[Anonymous]

How on earth did some student at Penn get their hands on this list?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So apparently someone at the Daily Pennsylvanian (the undergrad newspaper at Penn) was able to get their hands on the embargoed U.S. News & World Report college rankings for 2025. They posted a story about it, listing the top 10 schools:

https://www.thedp.com/article/2024/09/penn-princeton-mit-us-news-rankings-drop

1. Princeton
2. MIT
3. Harvard
4. Yale
5. Stanford
6. Caltech
6. Duke
6. Johns Hopkins
6. Northwestern
10. Penn

Thoughts?

US News got it right this time. This is the most reasonable top ten ranking of universities that I have ever seen.

Agreed. I'd swap out Hopkins for Chicago, but otherwise this looks about right to me.

Might want to change that to Duke. Chicago has no engineering.

[Anonymous]

and Duke Engineering is meh

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They have 4 schools at the rank of 6 because if there were 3, that would spell out 6-6-6 and then people would be afraid to apply to them.

Srsly, what kind of ranking system ends up with 4 6s in a Top 10. It's like they didn't get the assignment OR there's practically no difference in the education on offer.

There are always multiple schools that tie for a certain number in USNWR rankings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are we satisfied that US news is clearly a bit more stable and based in reality of what schools are prestigious.

If you're referring to the WSJ rankings, that one is not about "prestige." It's about outcomes - something I find a lot more useful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are we satisfied that US news is clearly a bit more stable and based in reality of what schools are prestigious.

Well, they certainly weren't last year. They got rid of class size, the qualifications of professors, the number of years it takes students to graduate, and so on. The financial aid that private universities offered didn't matter anymore. What mattered where the number of students on federal Pell grants, which are not needed when you go to high-endowment schools that offer grants that meet all need. And so on and so forth.

So it was chaos in the US News rankings last year. Public colleges moved up by 30,40,50 places in a single year. And private colleges took a heavy hit in last years rankings. It was obvious that the editors of US News had certain biases that they wished to see expressed in their rankings.

We will see what this year's list looks like and whether the editors continue to be ridiculous. If the leaked top 10 are true, I personally am not particularly bothered by the list so far. It seems fairly reasonable. We can all quibble about CalTech. It's such an unusual school for undergrad. There's less than 250 students per year that attend, and it's all STEM. What's the point of even comparing it to larger and more comprehensive universities? But no one would dispute that it's not a terrific school with some serious students.

And I would argue that Duke is overrated. But whatever. It's the rest of the list that I'm curious about.

The bolded indicates that it is *you* who has certain biases. Those of you who felt last year's USNWR rankings was "chaos" very clearly have kids in the small, expensive privates that were demoted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are we satisfied that US news is clearly a bit more stable and based in reality of what schools are prestigious.

Well, they certainly weren't last year. They got rid of class size, the qualifications of professors, the number of years it takes students to graduate, and so on. The financial aid that private universities offered didn't matter anymore. What mattered where the number of students on federal Pell grants, which are not needed when you go to high-endowment schools that offer grants that meet all need. And so on and so forth.

So it was chaos in the US News rankings last year. Public colleges moved up by 30,40,50 places in a single year. And private colleges took a heavy hit in last years rankings. It was obvious that the editors of US News had certain biases that they wished to see expressed in their rankings.

We will see what this year's list looks like and whether the editors continue to be ridiculous. If the leaked top 10 are true, I personally am not particularly bothered by the list so far. It seems fairly reasonable. We can all quibble about CalTech. It's such an unusual school for undergrad. There's less than 250 students per year that attend, and it's all STEM. What's the point of even comparing it to larger and more comprehensive universities? But no one would dispute that it's not a terrific school with some serious students.

And I would argue that Duke is overrated. But whatever. It's the rest of the list that I'm curious about.

The bolded indicates that it is *you* who has certain biases. Those of you who felt last year's USNWR rankings was "chaos" very clearly have kids in the small, expensive privates that were demoted.

Exactly.

[Anonymous]

https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/best-college-academics/

ties closely with this. Not bad.

[Anonymous]

I find the top ten to be boring because it's always the same schools. Much more interesting to me is the top 50.