2016 USNews Grad School Rankings

bernie12
Thu, 17 Mar 2016 13:14:43 +0000

@yinuos and @maiju15 Ignore any of the rankings that consistently see many schools having LARGE shifts whether Vandy went up or down (often this is the case for law and sometimes business. In fact, Businessweek seems like one of the business rankings that folks trust. Even poets and quants has lots of useful info accessible in many categories). A ranking that volatile (because schools do not dramatically improve or actually get dramatically get worse within a year) probably doesn’t have the best methodology. The methodology shouldn’t be ultrasensitive like that. Furthermore, 1 spot drop or increase is negligible. Vanderbilt is doing fine. I wouldn’t be tearing hair out over such small changes that show it doing very well. I mean, don’t be petty.

Dramatic improvements typically do not happen annually unless they deliberately make dramatic changes to things like the curriculum at the professional schools. Often small drops or increases per year at a school that has not made such changes can indicate subtle changes in admissions stats (unlike undergraduate, there really is no impetus to increase them every year as things such as the job market can shift it a lot for EVERY school. The main thing that counts is job placement for some professional schools so sometimes one graduating class not doing as well for whatever reason perhaps beyond the control of the school, can hurt the ranking).

Do not read too much into these. Also, in some rankings like law and business, a certain set of schools are actually almost immobile. Like it is hard to break into the top 10 of business or top 14 of law as those spots are essentially “reserved” for a certain echelon of schools that have traditionally been there that may indeed be quite exceptional in terms of job placement and prestige. They are essentially used as the calibrating point for everywhere else and if you break into them as a newcome, it is certainly impressive, but don’t expect it to be a stable rank. Usually those brackets are not as volatile as those right below it (though for law, Vandy does very well and IS very stable, knocking at the door of the T14, so it should be proud of itself…means it is doing something well and not just admissions).