Anonymous wrote:when Rutgers is now ranked higher than Tulane, CWRU, Miami, Wake, etc. after being perennially ranked in the 70s?

Ignore USNWR and create your own ranking. Problem solved.

Bye.

I have not even looked at the rankings once lol and I have a DD at my state flagship and my DS applying to a mix of private/public.

We made our own lists based on what they were looking for so a generic corporate ranking was not meaningful.

Especially since a lot of you can't figure out what it means...what is T20? What is T50? What is T10?.... come on people

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in NJ, which has some great public schools, and our valedictorian and lots of other top kids went to Rutgers. The main campus is a flagship state school in a state with lots of jobs (corporate HQs) and access to major cities.

Yeah, way back when, in the 1980s, it was considered a very good school. It has declined since but remains a solid flagship. At the same time, it is a pretty easy admit. There is no internal contradiction in saying that it is both a good school and that it is overrated by US News.

Most kids in NJ would pick any of the schools mentioned by OP over Rutgers, given the opportunity.

There's always been a lot wrong with the rankings, but the focus on pell grant recipients and first gen in recent years has really distorted the rankings.

Ideally, they would include factors such as 4 year graduation rate (not 6 years, which they currently use), availability and safety of undergraduate housing, average class size, and whether a professor or TA is teaching a class.

NY Times already has that kind of ranking. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/opinion/build-your-own-college-rankings.html

We found it very useful but the people who can’t think for themselves and need someone to rank schools still blindly follow rankings. Even ones as focused on social mobility as USNWR. You can see so many DCUM posters, most link to in need of social mobility given the demographics of this site, cite USNWR rankings as some sort of objective truth.

Anonymous wrote:when Rutgers is now ranked higher than Tulane, CWRU, Miami, Wake, etc. after being perennially ranked in the 70s?

Butthurt because you went to one of the aforementioned middling privates.

Got it.

The controversy over the US News rankings comes from how they weight different factors.

What's unfortunate is that US News could easily allow people to construct their own weights and generate new rankings based on them.

Say, if you think graduation rates are really important, increase their weight. Or if you care most about academic reputation? Give that more weight. All of this would be simple to do, but it would show how much the Top 20 (or whatever) colleges would change based on reasonable differences about what's most important. But it would make the rankings much more useful to actualy people!

I grew up in NJ, which has some great public schools, and our valedictorian and lots of other top kids went to Rutgers. The main campus is a flagship state school in a state with lots of jobs (corporate HQs) and access to major cities.

It’s about Pell grants. How important are Pell grants to you in terms of ranking a college or university?

Next year all these type of things are going away. So I guess the ranking will radically change again.

Anonymous wrote:when Rutgers is now ranked higher than Tulane, CWRU, Miami, Wake, etc. after being perennially ranked in the 70s?

IDK. Guess I've never lost any sleep over the rankings.

Anonymous wrote:Then don't. Bu I would rank them ahead of those schools as well. Especially Tulane and CWRU

Rutgers...above Case Western...really? Why?

Then don't. Bu I would rank them ahead of those schools as well. Especially Tulane and CWRU

Even their most closely followed rankings (law school rankings) are waning in influence. Dean Zearfoss of Michigan Law admissions said no one talks about ranking shifts up or down anymore but that they did when she was first getting into the game (in the '90s maybe?). They're becoming more and more obsolete.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/after-setbacks-us-news-law-school-rankings-show-signs-waning-influence-2024-04-12/

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2024/04/us-news-rankings-potpourri-waning-influence-penalizing-the-53-boycotting-law-schools.html

when Rutgers is now ranked higher than Tulane, CWRU, Miami, Wake, etc. after being perennially ranked in the 70s?