<p>Yes, Gourman ranks Tufts over Gtown for IR. I believe Gtown is ranked 4th, behind Princeton and JHU, and right ahead of Harvard. I would say any of those schools are top-notch for undergraduate IR, interchangeably.</p>
<p>I believe your reasoning – using rankings, esp. one like USNWR – to compare schools is flawed, so my only comment will be to say that I agree that USC and UNC-CH are not peer institutions to NU, but I also don’t think they’re peer to Tufts either. Tufts’ relatively low ranking is due to its poor “peer assessment” score, which is the only 100% subjective part of the USNWR ranking. This is due to the fact that Tufts, only a few decades ago, was a small New England liberal arts college (just ~15 years ago, Tufts was a Top 5 LAC – its move into the National Research Universities list is therefore very recent) which has blossomed into an international research university relatively recently, in terms of university histories. If you were to take the “peer assessment” score out, Tufts would rank much higher. There is no doubt that in the next few years that score will rise. Acceptance rate, SAT/ACT scores, etc. are very close (some #s are slightly higher, some are slightly lower) than those of JHU, Gtown, and NU. That’s why I say very honestly that they are all peer institutions. And they are all great schools. I applied to all, got into all, and again, picked Tufts because for ME it was the best/ideal school on many levels.</p>