Published in 1999, titled under 2000.
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Totally agree. And yet, here we all are scanning the rankings and commenting.
In reality these “rankings” are pretty much the same as they have ever been. The same 30 schools are at the top with some tinkering around the edges - does anyone really think there is an appreciable difference between in the education provided by most of these fantastic schools (other than the tech schools with their narrower focus).
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This is one (of many) flaws in the rankings. It is too blunt a tool.
Is MIT better than Princeton for engineering? Of course!
For humanities? Nope!
The rankings assume some sort of generic student that doesn’t actually exist.
The ideal ranking would show the best school for YOU.
In 2026, this is doable. But then people could not argue and debate the rankings, lol.
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IMO they should stop trying to be so precise. Buckets of 5 or 10 would be just fine and probably a better reflection of reality to people using the rankings to help choose between colleges. Of course, then there wouldn’t be as much change in rankings and take some of their newsworthiness away each year.
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U.S. News’ guidebook tends to deemphasize the weight students should place on the rankings. Few people read the guidebook, however. This is not U.S. News’ fault.
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I would think that you would want to look at the overall offering, in which case Princeton would seem to be a more “well rounded” school than MIT.
What strikes me as a bigger “issue” than who is #1 or #3 is that schools like UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC Merced,… are included in the top 50. These are schools with no testing requirements, with acceptance rates of 30-50% and with documented cases of a large portion of their incoming class not being able to do middle school math.
Again, I agree with you. Last year, UC Merced was very highly ranked and a lot of people called them out.
I am from CA and my daughter barely applied to UCs because of things like not being able to easily change your major, not being able to get the classes that you need to graduate in 4 years, etc.. Basically a whole host of “giant bureaucracy” problems that she wanted to avoid.
But I suspect that the UCs do very well on “value” metrics. You can go to a UC for $15K a year (in-state), graduate, and then get a job in “inflationary” CA which shows that you got a hell of an ROI on your education investment.
But here again the rankings show their limitations. Getting $80K in LA is not that great. Getting $80K in St. Louis is awesome. The metrics treat them as being the same and they are not.
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I would switch Duke with UChicago and Columbia with JHU (or simply put Columbia in with the #9 logjam…), but that’s just me. Finally, this latest tweak was enough to finally (barely) unseat Princeton at the top after its long reign. They’re still my #1 for undergrad. 
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Princeton is a second rate school
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And Harvard is Third Tier! 
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A lot of schools in the top 50 are test optional so would be admitting those students on the same set of academic factors. Same for the admit rates you mention. Some issues with math for sure (and I am all for bringing standardized tests back to the UCs) but I would like to see what you mean by documented cases of a “large” number, iow what that number actually is, from a reliable source.
Which is an entirely different issue and goes more to people understanding how schools they are applying to fit what they need. (My kid is also CA and didn’t apply to any instates, but for different reasons.)
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There are dozens - hundreds - of articles like this mentioning the shocking lack of preparedness of a significant percent of students at UC schools. Being test optional and having 30-50% acceptance rates are just some of the many “issues” with these schools being ranked as high as they are.
*For months, a sizable group of University of California professors have been demanding the reinstatement of standardized test requirements in the undergraduate admissions policy. Their main reason? A widening gap in mathematics ability among students in their classrooms. New data presented at the UC Board of Regents meeting Wednesday shows that more first-year students are failing introductory math courses now than six years ago when the university moved to a test-blind admissions process.
Yes, I’ve seen some of those articles. Do any of them quantify what you characterize as “large”?
I don’t see much difference in test policies or admit rates in colleges in the 30-50ish range vs the UCs you singled out.
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OK, so I guess we have hundreds / thousands of articles and professors complaining because of two students per incoming class!! Getting silly now.
More than 500 faculty members across California campuses signed a letter requesting UC regents and leadership to reinstate the academic standards for the 2027 admissions cycle, revealing that eliminating standardized testing requirements has forced professors to help students with “middle school” math.
Reminder that there is an entire thread about math readiness in California that is still open: At UC San Diego, one out of every eight incoming freshman do not meet middle school math standards
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UC San Diego - For the Fall 2025 entering freshman class:
665 students were enrolled in Math 2, a remedial course redesigned to cover elementary- and middle-school math (grades 1–8).
Another 256 students were in Math 3B, which covers missing high-school-level math.
Combined, close to 1000 students in the freshman class required remedial math.
We can keep going but hopefully you get it. If you don’t then not sure what else can be done. Or perhaps you can reach out one of the FIVE HUNDRED professors.
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To be clear, please move the conversation about math readiness to the thread I linked above. Further posts will be deleted as off topic.