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<p>Yes, Revealed Preferences does appear to be a ranking to me. It’s just one more approach, one that drives data on ~3,000 student choices through a statistical model. If it were “totally crap”, I don’t think its top-N result set would so closely mirror the result sets of other rankings. The precise ordering within these sets is another thing (they all differ, more or less, on that.)</p>
<p>I just reported the rankings that one web site (50topcolleges.com) collected, which suggests a fairly clear consensus favoring one of these two schools. If anyone thinks Payscale is a better ranking, then go with that. I could agree with the bigger point that the OP should choose based on fit (if in fact he has a clear personal preference.)</p>