US News and World Report published its 2024 college rankings last week and used a new scoring approach. The new methodology either considers new variables or gives more weight to existing variables related to first-generation students, Pell grant recipients, graduate indebtedness, and graduates getting a salary boost. Lots of other variables got nibbled to make room—most notably class size, which went from accounting for 8 percent of the final score to nothing.
How did those methodology changes affect the results?
I see two big, unsurprising results from those changes:
Big public schools climbed the rankings.
Expensive and good but not tippy-top private schools fell.
Big public schools moved up
Class size matters less to US News now, and variables related to poor and first-generation students matter more. Up come the state schools, especially in populous states.
Here are a few notable jumps:
UC Merced from 97th to 60th
Texas A&M from 67th to 47th
Stony Brook from 77th to 58th
Michigan State and Penn State from 77th to 60th (there are so many ties)
University of Illinois - Chicago from 98th to 82nd
Rutgers and the University of Washington from 55th to 40th
Virginia Tech from 62nd to 47th
Colorado School of Mines, SUNY Buffalo, the University of Delaware, and UC Riverside from 89th to 76th (so many ties!)
North Carolina State University from 72nd to 60th
Georgia Tech from 44th to 33rd
UC Davis from 38th to 28th
SUNY Binghamton from 83rd to 73rd
Pricey, non-Ivy+ private schools moved down
These schools have to feel frustrated. US News set some goals, and these colleges have been grinding away to try to meet them for years. The US News methodology valued resources per student, so they enrolled kids from the richest families they could. The US News calculation valued SAT scores and class rank, so they lured in the smartest kids they could.
American is frustrated. Here’s the press release from the college president, responding to the ranking change:
“As you likely know, the US News rankings have been under fire for the past few years, delivering more questions and concerns than answers and information. Unfortunately, this year is worse. US News chose to drastically overhaul their methodology, changing 17 of the 19 factors that produce the rankings and choosing unrepresentative data sources that lead to a lack of credibility in the measures they say they represent. Their questionable methodologies produced a confusing analysis that we can’t reproduce or confirm. In addition, the changes had a disproportionate impact on schools like AU–of 24 institutions in our competitive basket, 19 declined in the rankings and only one moved up.”
Here are the big drops for AU and similar schools.
American fell from 72nd to 105th (oof)
Tulane from 44th to 73rd
Pepperdine from 55th to 76th
Wake Forest from 29th to 47th
Southern Methodist University from 72nd to 89th
Villanova from 51st to 67th
Baylor from 77th to 93rd
NYU from 25th to 35th
Clemson from 77th to 86th
Texas Christian University from 89th to 98th
Ivy League dogpile
There were no big changes at the top of the list, but let’s look, just for fun.
Columbia is climbing back from its ignominious tumble, which it brought on itself by massaging its stats pretty shamelessly. It climbed from 18th to 12th. Also, I checked: Columbia’s admission and yield rates didn’t change materially during all this sliding around. Prestige is sticky.
Brown moved up from 13th to 9th — a marked contrast from the WSJ rankings, which put Brown at 67th!
Cornell went from 17th to 10th, vaulting over Dartmouth, which dropped from 12th to 18th.
U Chicago fell from 6th to 12th and was irritated about it. Don’t worry, Chicago! That much prestige doesn’t go poof, as Columbia’s experience shows.
Big drops for colleges for ethnic and religious minorities
These ones are weird!
Brandeis from 44th to 60th
BYU 89th to 115th
Howard 89 to 115th
Yeshiva 67th to 105th
What does this mean for your kid?
My best guess is that not much has changed for most applicants. The biggest chunk of the US News score still relates to graduation and retention—about 30 percent—so colleges are still going to want to enroll kids unlikely to wash out. Test scores and high school grades predict retention and graduation, so colleges will still want kids with high test scores and grades.
Maybe there will be a bit more competition from poor and first-generation students now, because colleges may give those kids an admission boost to juice their stats. I expect college presidents/their consultants will be weighing this tradeoff:
How much money do we lose by enrolling a poor or first-generation student instead of a full-pay student?
How much money comes from the rankings boost we get by enrolling that poor or first-generation student instead of a full-pay student?
We’ll see if the changed US News incentives are enough to change college behavior materially.
For now, your son or daughter faces the same goals as before.
Take tough classes and get good grades.
Pursue the extracurricular achievements that admission officers like.
Get the highest test scores you can.
Apply to colleges where you have a decent shot and can afford the tuition.
Clarke College Insight can help. Click those links for advice that is clear, detailed, actionable, empirically sound, and humane.