Reply to New USNWR rankings coming out in one week. Post predictions here!

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Reply to "New USNWR rankings coming out in one week. Post predictions here!"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here's what they said in advance:

The 2026 edition of U.S. News Best Colleges will be released on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, on usnews.com. The accompanying print guidebook is available for preorder.

We understand the importance of transparency, and as part of the launch, we will once again publish more than 15 articles on usnews.com detailing our ranking methodologies. While the 2026 rankings will use the same factors and weights as the previous edition, we will adjust how a few were calculated.

Key Methodological Notes
[b]This year’s rankings will reflect greater stability than recent editions[/b] due to two key factors: graduate outcomes data and ranking categories.

Graduate Outcomes Data
[b]The College Scorecard did not update its institutional graduate earnings and debt data in time for our analysis. As a result, we will reuse the same data from the previous edition for the 10% of our formula that these factors represent in total.[/b] We anticipate future updates to this data, especially with recent legislative changes and our ongoing communication with the College Scorecard.

Ranking Categories
No schools changed their ranking categories in this edition, even though the Carnegie Classifications framework was updated earlier this year. This choice aligns with what U.S. News has communicated publicly to institutional research forums over the past year regarding the 2026 edition. We will provide more details on our approach to category changes in future editions later this year.

Data Collection and Availability
We are pleased to report strong participation in U.S. News’s statistical survey from the academic community. For example, 99 of the top 100 National Universities and 97 of the top 100 National Liberal Arts Colleges have directly reported to us. This information includes fall 2024 admissions, enrollment and faculty details. Note that schools’ eligibility to be ranked is not contingent on their participation in U.S. News’s surveys.

Some of this data may be available on usnews.com before the U.S. Department of Education officially releases it. For institutional researchers, more granular data is accessible to our subscribers through the Academic Insights tool. We encourage you to request a demo to learn more about how this tool can support your work.

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Seems like they don't expect much to change.[/quote]

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