<p>The criticisms about gaming the system would be valid if you were talking about the overall USNWR rankings, but the [url=<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/09/08/best-undergraduate-engineering-programs-methodology]methodology[/url”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/09/08/best-undergraduate-engineering-programs-methodology]methodology[/url</a>] for the undergraduate engineering programs is based solely on the peer rankings of deans and faculty at other schools. Of course, this is silly in its own right because it completely ignores the opinion of employers and that sort of factor such as the non-academic things that places like [url=<a href=“http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/]Northeastern[/url”>http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/]Northeastern[/url</a>] have done to try to shoot up the rankings. I will also note that most deans and faculty at other programs are familiar with other schools through their knowledge of the graduate programs, so the “undergraduate engineering” rankings in USNWR are still rather heavily weighting the graduate programs in determining the list.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the graduate program rankings for engineering have a [url=<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/2014/03/10/methodology-2015-best-engineering-schools-rankings]methodology[/url”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/2014/03/10/methodology-2015-best-engineering-schools-rankings]methodology[/url</a>] that is much more diverse and, in my opinion, more suited to the undergraduate rankings. 25% is based on peer assessment and 15% is based on the assessment of corporate recruiters and others who hire engineers. Some of the other factors are more suited to undergraduate rankings and some of them really shouldn’t be there at all, but they are at least all pretty difficult to fake.</p>
<p>That said, they are still a highly imperfect system that should be used as a rough guide only. They do alright placing schools correctly into their correct tiers, but there is nothing to say that school number 7 is actually better than school number 12 or that school number 64 is better than school number 72. On the other hand, you can pretty much bet that school number 7 is by at least the most common metrics better than school number 64. That’s about the extend of the utility of the USNWR rankings. Anything beyond that is just silly.</p>