A few years ago, USNWR added new metrics for Pell Graduation Rate and Pell Graduation Performance, which “credit schools for enrolling and graduating students with significant financial need.” These factors, which now constitute 11% of the total ranking algorithm, tend to lift the rankings of large socioeconomically diverse public universities while hurting the rankings of private schools with affluent student populations and fewer Pell-eligible students. Tulane and Vanderbilt also dropped significantly when the formula changed, with the latter’s administration publicly complaining about the change.
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Probably helps explain the Merced rise, among others too.
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Thanks for the reminder. That metric and that 11%, is likely what is impacting Wake Forest and other schools with a similar profile (Middlebury College comes to mind).
Interesting that actions such as that Wake Forest announced that undergraduates from North Carolina with annual family incomes less than $200,000 per year will attend tuition-free beginning the 2026 fall semester, seem to have no impact.
I am not sure how the ranking making sense. Columbia is the lowest among Ivies now. But in our high school at least, Cornell is always the target for many students to throw an application no matter what stats they, and it appears to be lowest hanging ivy from the tree. haha
If this leads to actually enrolling and graduating a substantial number of students with significant financial need, one would think this would be reflected in future rankings. But this offer in itself wouldn’t be expected to be reflected in today’s rankings.
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Plus the rankings were likely largely finalized before that announcement anyway.
Does make me wonder if the announcement /policy is actually to try help raise its rankings again? Someone posted a thread recently wondering why a growing number of colleges were doing this and it didn’t occur to me at the time (I didn’t read much of the thread so someone may have said this) but now I wonder if gaming the rankings is part of the motivation. (I guess it’s a win-win outcome in this case though if it works)
Same answer as another poster. US News incorporated what are sometimes known as social mobility measures, and it hurt certain colleges and helped others relative to each other. To put it bluntly, colleges that were doing a good job serving more disadvantaged students got a relative boost.
Which is a possibly significant observation from a social policy perspective. Whether that should be an important factor in individual college choice is a different matter. Like, if you are an upper middle class kid looking for the best college for you, exactly how many disadvantaged kids are also enrolling may not matter that much to you. And I note at highly ranked college, the answer is almost always not that many disadvantaged students are enrolling as compared to advantaged kids. But depending on your definitions, one college might have, say, 15% disadvantaged kids, another 20%. Is that important?
I note some people have expressed some form of surprise that introducing these factors at relatively small weights could change relative rankings like that. This can happen because there is some rather “interesting” math involved in rankings formulas like this. Basically, if at least within a certain range, there is more variation between colleges in that range on Factor B than Factor A, exactly how they rank on Factor B can do more to determine their relative rankings even if Factor A has a higher “weight” in the formula.
And it appears these new measures worked like that, within a certain range at least. This sort of makes sense. 15% to 20% (as per the hypothetical above) is probably a bigger relative difference than among most measures for most close schools.
Anyway, Wake Forest was one of the hardest hit colleges by this change, dropping from 29 to 47. And to be blunt again, Wake Forest among colleges like that is pretty dependent on net tuition, and historically has not had the most generous need policies (we’ll see if that is actually changing–as others have discussed, there may be less substance to some of these “free” policies than it superficially appears),
Other colleges hit included a lot of Jesuit colleges, American, Tulane, Miami (OH), University of Denver, SMU, Brandeis, WPI, William & Mary, University of Miami, Rochester, NYU, Case, RPI, WashU, Tufts, Darmouth, Chicago . . . . Lots of great schools, in other words, but sorta true that these are not necessarily social mobility All Stars.
So again, should that matter to you, beyond say just comparing your actual aid package if any? That’s a personal decision.
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Has Rutgers always been so high? It is so interesting since so many high stats nj kids rather go to any other school, including those ranked lower, esp the few right below it.
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I think in general some very good colleges are in fact trying to improve their metrics on these issues a bit, and for more than just the US News rankings boost. The NYT, for example, started publishing periodic reviews on these sorts of issues, and it seems pretty clear that helped push some colleges to modifying their aid policies and such.
One problem they face, though, is lots of colleges are doing that. This is the zero-sum logic of rankings, if every college in your range is improving in some way, then your own improvements may not be reflected in a ranking gain, in fact you might even lose a bit.
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“You” as in the college might lose a bit? But a great many people will probably gain from this. (Assuming there’s no left field move to undercut this as well.)
I think one way to look at it might be that UMC students have a relatively good chance to succeed and graduate anywhere, but if a school is also doing a good job graduating its disadvantaged students, it may be an indication that it’s doing something right in terms of supporting students along the way. Even as an UMC student, you might end up needing (or being helped by) whatever the school is doing to support its disadvantaged students.
You might also simply prefer to be at a school with more socioeconomic diversity (my D26 feels this way and actually checks this metric when looking at schools).
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Wake is now 51.
Rutgers was one of many public universities that got a significant boost from the change in methodology, going from 55 to 40 for New Brunswick (Camden and Newark gained even more). Some others with as big or indeed bigger gains included UIC, Washington, Virginia Tech, ASU, Michigan State, Penn State, Stony Brook, TAMU, IIT, CSU Long Beach, George Mason, Temple, and UC Merced.
One some level this is “right”–like if you are interested in which colleges are doing the most for social mobility specifically, I have zero doubt Rutgers is doing a lot of that, along in fact with these other colleges.
But if you are, say, an already-advantaged kid in NJ, how much do you care about that? Maybe not so much.
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Yes, the 2023 to 2024 drop most directly shows what happened when US News incorporated social mobility measures for the first time.
Since then there have been more formula changes. And of course actual real world facts can change too, just usually not so dramatically. And of course the relevant real world facts could be about the colleges that moved up ahead or down below, as opposed to the college in question.
Like in 2025, Wake was in a tie for #46 with Georgia, Lehigh, Purdue, and Washington, and then #51 was the next group. In 2026, there is again a tie at #46 and a tie at #51. Georgia, Lehigh, and Purdue are still #46, but Washington actually moved up to #42. Meanwhile Rochester moved from #51 to #46, and Northeastern moved up from the next tie at #54 to #46.
OK, so is that a story about Wake? Or about these other colleges? No way to know from just these small ranking changes.
So to see if anything “real world” had changed about Wake over the last couple years, we would have to get the actual data they are using and track any differences.
Based on my experience attending college in the late 80s/early 90s Rutgers was mostly a “safety school” for good/great/excellent students. It was viewed to be in the same category as Boston University, Northeastern, UCONN, Syracuse, Penn State,…Very few students with good grades and high SAT scores attended.
I note there have been a lot of moving parts over the years.
I grew up in Michigan and went to college in that same era–not Michigan but a bunch of HS friends did. The running joke back then was there were more kids from NJ than Michigan at Michigan. Obviously not literally, but there was in fact an observable pattern of advantaged kids from states like NJ choosing publics like Michigan instead of their in-state flagship.
The thing is, the year I graduated HS, OOS tuition at Michigan was $5964. Even accounting for inflation, that would be like $15,600 today. And now OOS tuition is right around twice as much.
In terms of the difference, it looks like Rutgers in-state in that year was $3765, so $2199 difference in those dollars, about $5740 today. The difference is now closer to triple that.
Of course Michigan is not hurting for kids willing to pay so much OOS–that is why it charges so much.
Still, I do think SOME NJ families that would have considered Michigan over Rutgers at the old difference will reject the new difference.
And not just Rutgers. I think in general, many “flagships” and similar are getting more of their state’s top students because the pricing of nominally “better” OOS or private options has gotten less and less competitive over the years.
Which then might feed into better reputations, and it becomes an effect that builds on itself. Not quickly, but I think observably over time.
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I don’t know if this was a factor but in recent years Northeastern has shifted its financial aid awards away from merit in favor of need-based aid
OOS tuition alone is 64k-68k, in state 18k-21k. A hair less expensive than many of the private universities in its ranking vicinity, though those full payers who are price-sensitive down to that small difference should probably not be considering Michigan (my opinion, of course). I guess I think of it as quasi-private, LOL.
Oops, my bad, I was looking at just one term. I thought that sounded low.
So basically, double everything I said!
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I too noted that Rutgers is on par, ranking wise, with University of Maryland and University of Washington. The University of Washington is one of my S26’s favorite schools and I’ve been encouraging him to apply to Rutgers as well since they are quite well known for their philosophy program (one of S26’s desired majors). He’s like … Rutgers? Who? What? Where? It has very, very little brand recognition here in CA.
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