I know my history on this. I am not denying in any way that the class size shrunk or that NU.in plays advantages to the rankings like CGS and other similar programs. I’m simply saying that real meaningful changes have occurred to improve the school, something you argued against.
When schools change drastically, rankings take time to catch up. Northeastern’s programs are consistently ranked higher each year. When you use metrics that do not rely on reputation, you end up getting well-ranked programs. For example, if you look at research output to top conferences in CS, Northeastern is actually in the top 15. But when you look at the US News survey for graduate CS (100% based on survey rankings from other schools), they come out much lower. They did jump 11 spots between the last survey though. A great example of how actuality and reputation take time to match up though.
http://csrankings.org/
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings