Hello! So sorry if this has already been discussed, but I’m just not finding it. Can someone explain W&M’s drop in the rankings? I know rankings aren’t the be-all and end-all, just curious. Thanks so much in advance!
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U.S. News made significant changes to its ranking methods for the most recent year (see With a Departure from Historical Criteria, U.S. News Appears Willing to Shuffle Its Rankings).
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W&M’s overall score of 74
(William & Mary Overall Rankings | US News Best Colleges) places it in a dense part of the distribution curve, which makes large changes in apparent ranking possible. -
Some colleges move up or down in rankings based on substantive aspects.
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This alternative ranking, in which W&M places somewhat higher compared to other national universities, may be of interest:
The new rankings methodologies coming out recently put more weight on value-added/ROI/socioeconomic-diversity measures.
This was often good for colleges that were some combination of focused on preparation for professional careers (like engineering or business colleges), and/or relatively low in net cost of attendance (either just by having a low sticker price, or by things like having a high percentage of in-state students, or both).
OK, so, for example, the New Jersey Institute of Technology went up from #97 to #86 in the US News. This reflects a reality it does a good job of its mission of preparing students from New Jersey (it is like 94% in-state) for tech careers in a cost-effective way. Nothing has changed, of course, the new rankings just put more weight on this.
Conversely, as a general rule this was not good for many academicky colleges which were a combination of being weighted less toward immediate high income professional careers, and also having the sort of demographics where basically a lot of kids from upper middle class families were being prepared for upper middle class careers. Interestingly, the way a lot of the new measures work, you are likely better off having more very high income but also more lower income students than just a big smear of mostly upper middle class students.
OK, so this was not so good for, say, Chicago, which dropped from #6 to #12. Again, nothing changed, but Chicago doesn’t do much engineering, it does do a lot of PhDs (who are usually not being paid much during reporting windows), it does have an awful lot of upper middle class kids, and so on. Same with WUSTL, #15 to #24. They have actually been improving their socioeconomic diversity over where it used to be, but so have their peers, and so in relative terms this was not a good methodology change for WUSTL. Or Wake Forest, #29 to #47. Nothing has changed about these colleges, including their academic excellence, teaching excellence, or so on. But they are just not favored by this change in emphasis.
William & Mary is then an interesting case because it is a public, and many publics did pretty well in this change. But it is also a public with a pretty high out of state percentage, and even its in-state students tend to skew to upper middle class kids from Northern VA and such–not exclusively, but disproportionately. It is also more toward the academicky end than the pre-professional end. So, it dropped from #41 to #53.
OK, what does all this mean? Well, on an individual level, not much. Your own net cost of attendance is what matters, not some statistical average. Your satisfaction of your own academic and career placement goals matter, not some statistical average. And so on.
But from a social perspective, the new methodologies are arguably doing a better job picking out colleges fulfilling missions like providing upward mobility to a lot of residents of a specific state. And that may not really be all that relevant to every individual’s college choice, but it might be worth knowing anyway.
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Honestly I would not give it another thought. W&M is a wonderful college. Focus on fit (both social and academic) and affordability.
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For what it’s worth, I hold William & Mary in high esteem. I think it is one of the best colleges in a state full of them – right there with UVA, Washington & Lee, and the U of Richmond in terms of academic reputation at the undergraduate level. VA Tech is kind of the Purdue or GA Tech of Virginia and is also, I think, excellent. (there are additional quality schools in VA, of course, but those to me are the headliners)
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Yeah, the NUM Rankings have William & Mary very high, but that is because I am like the exact opposite in emphasis. I love a classic liberal arts and sciences education, love academicky kids who also can have nerdy fun, love historic colleges with historic(ish) campuses, and so on.
In fact, I have a lot of respect for all the Virginia colleges you mentioned, but the one that I personally just like the best is William & Mary.
But is it adding the most value for the residents of Virginia? Obviously that is a question for the residents of Virginia, and I actually think their answer might be that a diverse range of public colleges is actually great for Virginia. So maybe ranking these public colleges individually on social mobility measures, rather than the state’s public system as a whole, is not such a great idea.
In any event, to me William & Mary is a great option for people who like that sort of college, particularly since even OOS it is less expensive than market rate privates.
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The quality of the school didn’t change, just the criteria they used for the rankings. Here is a list of some of the higher rankings WM received. W&M Rankings | William & Mary
I might note the NUM Rankings also take very seriously the Best Undergraduate Teaching peer survey referenced there, which has William & Mary tied for #6 among universities:
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/undergraduate-teaching
As always I do not think strict rankings here really matter, but the fact it is among the best-regarded such colleges is, to me, very relevant to college choice.
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