Johns Hopkins is an elite institution; it has been such for quite a while and will probably continue to be such for the forseeable future. I don’t see any significant “rise” - three places on U.S. News is basically nothing; a 5 point acceptance rate decrease probably just means they managed to convince more unqualified applicants to apply; and the size of thes tudent body does not necessarily correlate with the quality of the academcs. If that was the case, tiny colleges could outrank Harvard and Yale, and huge schools like Penn State, Michigan and UCLA wouldn’t have the reputations they do. Schools as flush with money and prestige as JHU could simply hire more faculty to keep their student to faculty ratio low.