<p>I wonder why we’re spending so much time trying to make sense of the hocus pocus that the USNews rankings represent? You’ve identified some of the key “fudge factors” that they’ve built into their unscientific formulas in order to engineer the rankings to their liking.</p>
<p>There are some other instances where they take reported data at face value when they have no reason to do so. One is the reported SAT’s for schools that don’t require them. Another is the reported student/faculty ratios, which are sometimes absurdly low.</p>
<p>The ignoring of “outcome” data (other than graduation rate – accompanied by its own fudge factor) remains a huge problem. The very fact that this is run as an “annual” horserace rather than looking at longer-term stats and outcomes is also totally out of synch with what a college, a faculty, and a program represents.</p>