(06-19-2020 12:58 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(06-19-2020 12:20 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Interesting that all of the AAC, MAC, and CUSA schools are ranked in USNWR.

And because others have commented on it: USNWR is easily the most important ranking system because it's the one the media focuses on. None of the others mean basically anything. A school president can see his school drop down in WSJ and Carnegie etc. and not get fired.

If you tumble in USNWR, you get fired.

Yes, I agree. The USNWR rankings are important because the consumers (prospective parents and students) deem them to be important. Many (nearly all?) administrators may hate the USNWR rankings and find them quite flawed (which is a totally valid concern), but nevertheless can't ignore them because the marketplace cares about them. I've said this before, but I think the reason why the USNWR rankings are used by consumers so much is that they generally pass the "smell test" of which schools are hardest to get into for undergrad. No one trusts a ranking where Harvard and Stanford are ranked #20 because that doesn't reflect the reality in the marketplace of college admissions (where those two schools are the toughest to gain admission to even for applicants with perfect stats, test scores and extracurricular activities). Now, whether that means that the USNWR are simply reflecting the "confirmation bias" of its readers is a fair question.

That's right - the USNWR rankings are respected by the public (somewhat ironically, as it is a case of the tale wagging the dog) because it most closely tracks what people intuitively believe are the best schools. The common belief is that schools like Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT are among the very best schools, and they are always in the top 10 of US News.

Other ranking systems that produce counter-intuitive results, like your example of some system ranking Harvard #20. smell fishy and beggar belief, like some CFB computer that ranks an unbeaten G5 team at #3 ahead of P5 heavyweights, even if the latter method actually has sounder underlying statistics or whatever.

And for that reason, the same administrators who curse under the breaths about the tyranny and facile nature of US News rankings will be the first to issue a trumpeting press release if their school moves up 10 spots in the latest rankings.