<p>a large majority of that ranking remained the same. I think i read that from like 12-25 there was no chance in ranking. These rankings were clearly meant to manipulate the data and put some universities <em>cough</em> Uchicago <em>cough</em> on the top.</p>
<p>You have to remember that USC is a private institution. Compare USC to its california public peers (among the best publics): Berkeley [21] USC [22] and UCLA [25] now compare USC to its california private peers (among the best privates): Stanford [5] Caltech [5] and USC [22]. USC clearly isn’t the peer of the high quality privates in california. Its private peers are like CMU [23] and WakeForest [25]</p>
<p>all in all, take rankings with a grain of salt. Forbes ranked UCLA 55 and USC like 165, but the world didn’t end :D</p>