<p>“Chicago has always had a superb reputation. Popularity is a whole different kettle of fish. Some people get ‘where fun goes to die’… others will never understand. It’s a bit like trying to understand why scaling Mt. Everest is someone else’s idea of fun. If you don’t get it, you’re never going to get it.” </p>
<p>I like this discription </p>
<p>Also, everyone needs to stop ****ing and moaning about weather. The way some people make it out, the USNWR should factor in average yearly temperature and annual precipitation in a 37.8% of their formula…</p>
<p>USC, U Washington, U Wisconsin, UVa all are making a solid move up. The state schools including all of the above had a tough time in the early 2000 period but better times have returned and during the down time they got leaner and learned about fundraising. Also their home states are finally coming to realize the economic development side of major research universities. USC just started to want to be more than a school for average rich kids.</p>
<p>University of Florida. National championships galore are attracting applicants in droves, and coupled with Bright Futures, the smart students of the south are bypassing stronger northeastern schools for the Gator Nation. The recent surge in the number of applicants are going to attract the faculty to support them, and push an already rising school further up the USNews rankings.</p>
<p>MikeU - on your list, I do think NYU is going to be considered excellent overall soon, though the undergrad program is lacking. The # of apps this year went down, acceptance rate up, and they are having trouble getting money from alum b/c undergrad students may not have loved their experience. It’s grad and professional schools are top notch, though.</p>
<p>To the original poster, I don’t know much about Tufts, but I would already consider the other four to be schools with excellent nationwide reputations. They might “emerge” more, but I think they are already there.</p>
<p>USC has already done an excellent job of redefining itself, but one has to wonder whether there is a bit of a glass ceiling for an institution with such a large undergrad student body.</p>
<p>I think people are missing a few obvious choices here: younger schools without a sufficient history to build a critical name and reputation… in this vein, I would look toward schools like Carnegie Mellon, UCSD, Olin, Harvey Mudd, and Tufts (which has only been a research Univ. for about 40 years) as institutions with potential for significant improvement in the near future.</p>
<p>Moving up significantly in the college rankings game is a lot harder and a lot more rare than most people realize, particularly as you move to the top of the pyramid. HYPSM as well as Caltech, Duke, and Dartmouth have not been out of the top ten for more than 15 years. Going back to the early 1990s, the only Top 25 schools which have made any type of serious upward movement are Wash U (moving from #24 in 1991 to a high of # 9 in 2004 and a current rank of #12) and U Pennsylvania (moving from #16 in 1994 to reach a high of #4 in three different years and a current rank of #7). </p>
<p>On the downside, since the early 1990s most of the public universities have seen their level slip. I concur with barrons’ comments above about the financing difficulties that these schools have experienced and how that contributed to their rankings stumble. However, while the public universities will always have an important role on the American university scene because of the technical research that some of these institutions perform, I believe that their student body quality will be under constant pressure. Ultimately their fate is in the hands of the politicians and the voters of each state who want access for their citizens first and more qualified OOS students second. I particularly don’t share his optimism for schools like U Michigan that are located in economically troubled states that are losing population and for whom funding and enrollment issues will only become more acute. U Michigan and U Virginia and others are trying to navigate around this by raising huge sums of money to offset current and future state funding gaps and these schools may be able to overcome these secular pressures. But the scene is unlikely to get better and lesser prepared state universities will be put under great and increasing strain. </p>
<p>There has been a tremendous amount of comment elsewhere about demographics and the changes in national and geographic ethnicity and what this means for future college enrollments. Furthermore, the increase in the pool of quality applicants and the empowering nature of decentralized information brought on by greater use of technology has assisted the sharp increase in student quality at a much wider number of schools. </p>
<p>Clearly the five schools mentioned by the OP are beneficiaries of these trends as are many, many other schools, including the second tier of UC schools that now have very high quality, but not very well recognized student bodies. But the Education Establishment and the media that supports them is loathe to upset the status quo and embrace these schools, so it will be tough for the public to understand and appreciate just how many great schools and great students are spread out across the country. My personal belief is that a collegiate “glass ceiling” has been erected over these schools and, without significant changes in rankings methodology (like getting rid of the Peer Assessment), it is unlikely that they will make substantial further moves up the rankings ladder.</p>
<p>UVa attracts top researcher from Northwestern. The Virginia economy is far more positive than Michigan’s and better situated for future growth. </p>
<p>For all practical purposes, UVa has essentially become a private institution - first public Univ. in the U.S. to receive the majority of its funding from private sources. Whether this will be a good or bad development remains to be seen, but I think there are more than a few ppl in C-ville who wouldn’t mind becoming a completely autonomous, independent institution.</p>