<p>Nice, Merryecho. :)</p>
<p>In all honesty, moving from #28 into the top 27 (there’s apparently at least a three-way tie for the last spot in the Top 25) isn’t that big a move. But I think it’s significant to note that Wake has to start in a hole in these rankings and then achieve highly in the objective categories in order to catch most other National Us. Wake is between categories - not as graduate program-extensive nor research-based as big research Us, but too large and varied to be a Masters U or an LAC. Accordingly, its Peer Assessment score will never match up to those of the traditional big research institutions, since those are the source of the peers who give the assessments.</p>
<p>This year, Wake had a 3.5 PA score on a 1-to-5 scale. If that score had come in at 4.0 (bear in mind that Chapel Hill got a 4.1), that would have increased Wake’s PA half a point on a four-point scale. In a category with a maximum value of 25 points, a 4.0 should add three points to Wake’s overall score. The difference in those three points this year was five places in the rankings.</p>