If you look at Cal’s and Michigan’s PA scores at USNews you will see that both of them remain virtually unchanged. That was the original metric used to rank universities by the magazine. When they realized that they could appeal more to snobby coastal subscribers in the northeast (the kind that actually pay to read their rubbish) they started to add metrics that totally favored private schools. Thus no publics in the top 15 and only 4 in the top 25. That’s why both schools have dropped. Academically, they are better than most of the top 25.
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