<p>What would things be like today if USNWR never existed? (And, don’t just say someone else would have come up with a ranking if USNWR didn’t.)</p>
<p>To mention just a few effects: If you go back before USNWR came out with its first college rankings in 1983, students and their parents relied on the various college guidebooks, which gave a range of SAT scores and designated schools as “very selective”, “selective”, etc. People still knew which schools were better than others. They were able to select schools without a ranking system. Among informed people, the Ivies still were considered as more selective schools, even outside their region. The so-called “Public Ivies” — pretty much the same group as today— were known to be the better public universities. People in the Northeast, and sometimes in parts of the Midwest, still looked down on “state schools”. Students were not in such a frenzy about getting accepted to certain limited number of “elite” schools, and typically didn’t apply to 10+ schools. Students participated in their high school ECs because they were interested in them and didn’t try so much to game the admissions process with excessive or exotic activities they were “passionate” about. So, it seems that overall there were a lot of detrimental effects of the USNWR rankings (apart from whether or not you think it’s a valid ranking), and not so many beneficial effects.</p>
<p>“If you go back before USNWR came out with its first college rankings in 1983, students and their parents relied on the various college guidebooks, which gave a range of SAT scores and designated schools as “very selective”, “selective”, etc. People still knew which schools were better than others. They were able to select schools without a ranking system.”</p>
<p>I was an applicant during that time, I made my own “ranking” from the information provided in the college guidebooks, which was quite extensive. Those guidebooks broke out acceptance rates and SATs by individual colleges of multi-college universities, and separately by M and F applicants. There was plenty of data presented, besides their summary selectivity “buckets”.</p>
<p>One came up with one’s own ranking system, based on what they individually thought was important, which also is IMO what people should be doing now.</p>
<p>They didn’t have surveys of guidance couselors, or Peer Assessment surveys, but there was sufficient information IMO.</p>
<p>Without USNWR, I would just rank universities by admissions stats (SAT, GPA, admit rate) and I would probably get roughly the same results as USNWR except the publics would most likely all be lower down.</p>
<p>^ “No point in thinking of what ifs”
What an unimaginative statement.</p>
<p>“If you’re trying hard to bash WUSTL or promote Berkeley then you’re stupid.”
No one even mentioned WUSTL or Berkeley. So, what’s your problem, puddin’ head?</p>
<p>I agree. I might not have had a board full of people to advise me, or the extensive data found in USNWR, but I saw my way clear to identifying some very good schools that were a fit with my academic profile. And since this was the '80’s, I applied to 4, got into all 4, and the “safety” on my list was WashU :-).</p>