<p>^ Columbia should never be tied with Chicago, at least not yet. Columbia at worst should be tied with Stanford/Mit/Caltech.</p>
<p>High of this year’s rankings (regarding the top 15):
- Big gap between Harvard, Princeton, & Yale and Columbia, Stanford, UPenn, Caltech, MIT, Dartmouth, Duke, & UChicago.
- Columbia made a big jump to #4, even though it’s score didn’t improve much.
- Stanford, MIT, and Caltech fell to seemingly unreasonable ranks, but they have been at these places in previous years.
- Princeton is #2.
- Dartmouth, a perennial top ten since the 1980’s until recent three years, made the top 10 at #9. It also stayed at #1 for undergraduate teaching.
- Brown didn’t experience much movement and stayed at #15.</p>
<p>Feel free to add to these highlights.</p>
<p>People seem to forget that a school may not have moved up so much because of their own drastic improvements but rather because of other school’s drastic failures.</p>
<p>Funny that people were saying counselors know NOTHING and shouldn’t be included yet they have the exact same top 5 as what is commonly held as gospel on this site. HYPSM all tie at #1:</p>
<p>[Best</a> Colleges - Education - US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-counselor-rank]Best”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-counselor-rank)</p>
<p>What are those academics, deans, and provosts thinking about with their PA?!? ;)</p>
<p>Georgetown and Hopkins moved up from a 4.7 last year to a 4.8 this year to beat out both Dartmouth and Duke. Northwestern, Cal Tech, Berkeley, and UPenn moved down from a 4.7 last year to a 4.6 this year. Rounding is definitely key is US News and World Report’s ranking. Because clearly a school with a 4.651 rating is superior to one that is 4.644. ;)</p>
<p>Or change in usnews’ methodology.</p>
<p>Don’t hate on JHU… !!</p>
<p>High school counselors have Georgetown with a PA of 4.8? No wonder these rankings are screwed up! And yes, HSCs are CLUELESS!</p>
<p>Tulane not in the top 50 is a damn joke. I want to fight Morse</p>
<p>bluedog: Those are rankings from high school counselors. You know those people that really heave little clue about academic quality that so many of us warned would show up in these reports?</p>
<p>High school counselors rank Chicago #19 at 4.5, behind Carnegie Mellon for Christ sake. They have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. And Caltech at 3.6, Georgetown at 3.8? They’re clueless! It’s a disgrace that US News included them in the metric.</p>
<p>By the way, did I mention that Clemson is #12 for best undergraduate teaching? Yeah, that’s right haha :)</p>
<p>Interesting that Chicago maintains at #9, despite a GCA of 4.5 . . . tied at 19th with Vandy and Tufts.</p>
<p>Harvard deserves to be at #1. HYPSM+Caltech are virtually of the same quality. Columbia, Dartmouth, and Penn are virtually of the same quality. Duke, UChicago, JHU, Brown, Cornell, NU, and WashU are virtually of the same quality. Overall, how a student do at each of these schools matters way more than which of these schools one attends.</p>
<p>Rny2: That’s extremely good news for Chicago, since Nondorf can easily manually increase that number. Also, last year’s SATs and % within top 10% of high school class weren’t that high (i.e., the data used in this ranking), but with the big jump in admissions this year, we should be able to increase this number for next year’s ranking. This should put us in excellent position for tying or even overcoming MIT and Caltech next year for the 7th spot.</p>
<p>
Does anyone else find it really funny how much certain people have to say about these rankings? I mean, what qualifications do you have that allow you to say that Columbia should be ranked higher than Penn or lower than Stanford? Have you attended all of these schools?</p>
<p>phuriku - Caltech at 4.6</p>
<p>
Really? Based on what?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Right - Caltech’s 4.6 vs. Georgetown’s 4.8.</p>
<p>
Are you aware that Penn has been ranked higher than Columbia for each and every one of the past 13 years? And there’s only 1 point out of 100 separating them in this latest ranking.</p>
<p>You may personally prefer Columbia over Penn, but the overall superiority of one over the other is neither obvious nor conclusive to anyone truly knowledgeable about both schools and the ranking methodology and history of US News.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah, must be the fundamentals are solidifying. Of course, I wouldn’t count on making any predictions for next year’s rankings now. The way it looks on this board, Morse and US News are going to have to think some things over . . .</p>