As an example of U.S. News predecessors, Life Magazine in 1960 sorted colleges into tiers based on their SAT profiles:

Amherst
Carleton
Columbia
Harvard
Haverford
Princeton
Reed
Rice
Swarthmore
Williams
Yale

Brandeis
Brown
Chicago
Cornell
Dartmouth
Hamilton
Johns Hopkins
Lehigh
Oberlin
Rochester
Stanford

Antioch
Bowdoin
Duke
Kenyon
Michigan
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pennsylvania
Iowa
Tufts
Union
UC-Berkeley
Sewanee

Colgate
Denison
Grinnell
Knox
Lawrence
Muhlenberg
Occidental
UColorado

Beloit
NYU
Pittsburgh
Southern Methodist
Syracuse
Virginia
Vanderbilt

LIFE - Google Books https://share.google/ZPj3tUkYNYtZlLet4

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There were still guidebooks with info about schools and college fairs. But also even top students tended to stay in their region. I grew up in CA and applied to some UCs, Cal Poly SLO, and a few OOS schools. One of those was in an area that I liked where we had relatives. The others I'd read about and liked something about their program (now I can even remember what!). Got in everywhere and ultimately made the decision on fit and price (CPSLO).

Even without the USNWR rankings I got some crap from classmates for choosing a Cal State over a UC but the smaller size/undergrad focus was a better fit for me.

I also grew up in CA and I never understood why Cal states were considered "lesser than" UCs. I started out at a UC but it was not a good fit for me and I left and ultimately graduated from a Cal State. Because I was in good academic standing when I left the UC I was told I could re-enroll at any time--people thought I was crazy not to.

I work with coworkers who graduated from UC and Cal State. It's a blue-collar profession, FWIW. I have heard from UC graduates, if they knew what they knew then working alongside Cal State graduates, they would have gone to Cal State and saved the difference.

This is weird because the prices are not all that different unless they were talking about living at home. Housing is the real variable in the UC and Cal State comparisons.

The rankings are somewhat useful: If one school I haven't heard of is ranked 238 and another is ranked 47, that's helpful information. But knowing one school is 23 and another is 28 tells you only that they are basically the same.