<p>[Frequently</a> Asked Questions: College Rankings - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2010/08/17/frequently-asked-questions-college-rankings#7]Frequently”>http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2010/08/17/frequently-asked-questions-college-rankings#7)
Why U.S. News ranks colleges</p>
<pre><code>Why rank colleges?
Are the rankings objective and fair?
Why are rankings helpful in choosing a college?
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<p>Click here to find out more!
How U.S. News ranks colleges</p>
<pre><code>In brief, how does U.S. News rank colleges?
Does U.S. News rank all colleges and universities?
Why does the methodology change most years?
What changes, if any, were made this year to the 2011 Best Colleges methodology and the presentation of the rankings?
Why does U.S. News classify colleges into different categories before ranking them? How are the categories defined?
What are National Universities?
What are National Liberal Arts Colleges?
What are Regional Universities and Regional Colleges?
What are tiers, and why are some schools listed in tiers and not number ranked?
What measures of academic quality does U.S. News use in its rankings?
Where do the data used in the rankings come from?
Which measure of quality is most important?
How did U.S. News decide how much weight to give each indicator in its ranking formula?
Why did my school’s rank go up (or down) this year?
Why do private schools fare better than publics in the U.S. News rankings?
Why doesn’t U.S. News rank undergraduate specialty schools in fine arts, engineering, and business?
Does U.S. News consider economic diversity in its rankings?
What does it mean when a school is marked as RNP or Unranked?
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<p>Using the rankings</p>
<pre><code>What is the best way for students and their parents to use the rankings?
How can I find the rank of a particular school?
How can I find out a school’s rank from last year (or an earlier year)?
If a school goes up or down in the rankings, does it mean the school is getting better or worse?
How can I compare a school in one category with one in a different category?
How can I compare two schools in the same category but different regions?
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<p>Why U.S. News ranks colleges</p>
<p>Why rank colleges? A college education is one of the most importantand one of the most costlyinvestments that prospective students will ever make. For this reason, the editors of U.S. News believe that students and their families should have as much information as possible about the comparative merits of the educational programs at America’s colleges and universities. The data we gather on America’s collegesand the rankings of the schools that arise from these dataserve as an objective guide by which students and their parents can compare the academic quality of schools. When consumers purchase a car or a computer, this sort of information is readily available. We think it’s even more important that comparative data help people make informed decisions about an education that at some private universities is now have a total cost of more than $200,000 including tuition, room, board, required fees, books, transportation, and other personal expenses.</p>
<p>Are the rankings objective and fair? We do our utmost to make sure they are. Each school’s rank (within its group of peer institutions) is based on the same set of quality measures. Furthermore, at least 75 percent of a school’s ranking is based on a formula that uses objective measures of academic quality such as graduation rates (77.5 percent in the National Universities and National Liberal Arts categories). The remaining 25 percent (22.5 percent in the National Universities and National Liberal Arts categories) is based on a peer assessment or an academic reputation survey among high school counselors. U.S. News asks the president, provost, and dean of admissions at each school to rate the quality of the academic programs for schools in the same ranking category, including their own. (Those unfamiliar with a particular school are asked to check a box labeled “Don’t know.”) Peer assessments are subjective, but they are also important: A diploma from a distinguished college can help a graduate get good jobs and gain admission to top-notch graduate programs, just as a high school’s reputation can help or harm an applicant’s chances of getting into a good college. U.S. News also asks high school counselors to rate colleges in the National Universities and National Liberal Arts categories.</p>
<p>Why are rankings helpful in choosing a college? Rankings are helpful to applicants because they rate the strength of the academic program at each undergraduate institution. As such, the rankings give applicants information on a key factor to consider when selecting a college. Furthermore, the rankings are based on accepted measures of academic quality chosen after careful reporting and research on measuring quality in education. U.S. News takes pains to gather data in a uniform way and eliminate any gaps. Finally, the rankings condense a great deal of information about the quality of the education at each school, making it easier to compare institutions and select the best one for an individual.</p>
<p>How U.S. News ranks colleges</p>
<p>In brief, how does U.S. News rank colleges? To rank colleges, U.S. News first places each school into a category based on its mission (research university or national liberal arts college) andfor universities offering a range of master’s programs and colleges focusing on undergraduate education without a particular emphasis on the liberal artsby location (North, South, Midwest, and West). National universities where there is a focus on research and that offer several doctoral programs are ranked separately from national liberal arts colleges, and regional universities and regional colleges are compared against other schools in the same group and region. Second, we gather data from and about each school in 16 areas related to academic excellence. Each indicator is assigned a weight (expressed as a percentage) based on our judgments about which measures of quality matter most. Third, the colleges are ranked based on their composite weighted score. We publish the numeric rank of roughly the top three-fourths of schools in each of the 10 categories; the remaining lowest ranked schools in each category are placed into the Second Tier, listed alphabetically, based on their overall score in their category.</p>
<p>Does U.S. News rank all colleges and universities? Not quite. To be included in the rankings, a college or university must be regionally accredited and have a total enrollment of at least 200 students. Also, we do not rank certain schools for school-specific reasons, such as cases where the undergraduate student population consists almost entirely of nontraditional students. In addition, 58 of the approximately 1,400 accredited institutions in the United States are specialty institutions that offer most or all of their degrees in fine arts, performing arts, business, or engineering. We also have gathered information on over 450 schools that include some nontraditional and international students; these schools are not ranked. This year, however, we are ranking 446 accredited undergraduate business programs and 370 accredited undergraduate engineering programs. This information can supplement the colleges’ overall rankings for students with an interest in these majors.</p>
<p>For the fourth year in a row, we have created groups of unranked schools that we have listed alphabetically in separate tables at the bottom of the category in which they would have been ranked. We have been doing this to some degree since 1990. U.S. News believes that because these schools are unable to report key educational characteristics or because they have certain other characteristics, it would be unfair to try to compare them statistically with the other schools that are part of the rankings. For the fourth year in a row, those institutions that have indicated that they don’t use the SAT or ACT in admissions decisions for first-time, first-year, degree-seeking applicants were included in the list of unranked schools. In addition, some schools were not ranked because they didn’t receive enough responses on the peer assessment survey to allow us to use their peer score as part of the overall ranking. Other types of schools have been unranked in previous years and continue to be unranked this year. They include schools with total enrollment of fewer than 200 students; schools where a vast proportion of students are nontraditional; colleges that don’t accept first-year students, sometimes called upper-division schools; private universities that are for-profit; and a few specialized schools in arts, business, or engineering. (These schools are classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as “Special Focus Institutions.”)</p>
<p>Why does the methodology change most years? U.S. News refines its methodology for one simple reason: to improve it. There is an active and ongoing debate about how best to measure quality in education, and U.S. News pays close attention to that debate. When new ideas for measuring quality are proposed, we evaluate them carefully and make changes to ensure that we provide the best possible rankings to our readers. For example, over time, the ranking model has put less emphasis on input measures of quality (which look at characteristics of the students, faculty, and other resources going into the educational process) and more emphasis on output measures (which look at the results of the educational process). This shift was consistent with the increased emphasis that educators, researchers, and policy makers have placed on results when comparing and evaluating educational programs.</p>
<p>What changes, if any, were made this year to the methodology and the rankings? Several changes were made:</p>
<p>After careful thought, U.S. News has made some significant changes to the 2011 Best Colleges presentation and ranking methodology:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Category names have been changed. To make the rankings more understandable and to reduce confusion, for the 2011 Best Colleges we changed many of the ranking category names. This year, schools are designated National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities, and Regional Colleges. The two regional groups previously were labeled “Universities-Master’s” (now called Regional Universities) and “Baccalaureate Colleges” (now called Regional Colleges) to reflect the official Carnegie classification of universities whose highest degree is a master’s and four-year colleges that specialize in professional as well as liberal arts degrees. In addition, we changed the category name of the Liberal Arts Colleges to the National Liberal Arts Colleges. The labels “Universities-Master’s” and “Baccalaureate Colleges” had regularly puzzled both readers and the schools themselves. For instance we were regularly asked both by readers and those at some higher eduction institutions whether the Universities-Master’s category represented rankings of master degree programs at any of the schools. The rankings were not of any master’s program at any of the schools. The label Baccalaureate Colleges was also unclear because colleges don’t identify themselves using that terminology and many people did not understand how the word Baccalaureate could be used to describe a particular type of college. The number of institutions in the Regional Universities and Regional Colleges did not change, and the schools are still ranked in four regionsNorth, South, Midwest, and Westbecause they tend to draw heavily from surrounding states.</p></li>
<li><p>More schools have been ranked. In response to a strong interest from readers in knowing precisely where all schools on their list stand, we’ve opted to display the rank of the top 75 percent of schools in each category, up from 50 percent. This top-ranked group will be called the First Tier. The schools in the bottom 25 percent of each group are listed alphabetically as the Second Tier; which was previously called the Fourth Tier. This means that we have eliminated the Third Tier from the rankings and we are now numerically ranking 75 percent of the schools in the National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities, and Regional Colleges categories. The same number of schools appear in the ranking tables as last year.</p></li>
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<p>Why did we make this change? We believe that the data are complete enough to numerically rank more schools given our robust methodology. The quality of the data we collect has improved over the years, so that it is now rich enough to rank more schools numerically. This change will also reduce ranking volatility, since far fewer schools will now drop in and out of the numerical rankings in any given year. We believe dropping the Third Tier and having a First Tier and Second Tier will make the Best Colleges rankings less confusing for all users.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Graduation rate performance is more heavily weighted. This measure now accounts for 7.5 percent of the final score (compared to 5 percent previously) for national universities and national liberal arts colleges. This variablethe difference between a school’s actual graduation rate and the one predicted by U.S. News based on the students’ test scores and institutional resourceshas been well received by many higher education researchers because it’s a measure of educational outcomes and also rewards schools for graduating at-risk students, many of whom are receiving federal Pell grants. This means that schools can benefit in the Best Colleges rankings by enrolling and then graduating more of these at-risk students.</p></li>
<li><p>High school counselors are given a say. For the first time, the opinions of high school counselorsa font of firsthand information about the schools their graduates attendare factored into the ranking calculations for national universities and national liberal arts colleges. In those two categories, the weight assigned to the peer ratings collected in a survey of college presidents, provosts, and deans goes down to 15 percent of the overall score from 25 percent; ratings by the high school counselors surveyed get a weight of 7.5 percent. In the National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges categories, the combined weighting in the overall score of these two undergraduate academic reputation factors is 22.5 percent, down from 25 percent previously. This means that in these two categories the total weight of reputation has been reduced by 2.5 percentage points. We are publishing a new “Undergraduate Academic Reputation Index” that reflects the weighted combined results of both reputation surveys. The Undergraduate Academic Reputation Index uses the same percentages that each reputation survey was weighted in the overall rankings as the weights used to create the index. The highest score a school can receive is an index number of 100. The higher the number, the better the school’s academic reputation compared to other schools in its category.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Over the years of doing the rankings, U.S. News has been asked by many counselors to include their views in rankings. We have listened and agree. We have added the opinions of high school counselors since we believe they have considerable knowledge about the college admission process and that they have highly informed views on many colleges in their region and nationwide. We think that counselors have the broad experience and expertise that is needed to assess the academic quality of colleges and universities, given their role in assisting prospective students and their parents as they make choices about pursuing postsecondary education. In addition, U.S. News did the high school counselor ranking of colleges in order to obtain well informed opinions on the relative merits of colleges from a much larger diverse group of higher education experts than just college presidents, provosts, and admissions directors.</p>
<ol>
<li>U.S. News is publishing its second separate public high school counselor rankings of colleges in our National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges ranking categories.</li>
</ol>
<p>Why does U.S. News classify colleges into different categories before ranking them? How are the categories defined? The purpose of grouping colleges into categories is to compare schools with similar missions. For example, schools that offer graduate programs and emphasize research are generally in different categories from colleges that focus exclusively on teaching undergraduates. To define the categories, we used the 2006 Basic classification system developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, an accepted classification system in higher education. U.S. News collapses nine of the Carnegie categories into four: national universities, national liberal arts colleges, regional universities, and regional colleges. The regional universities and regional colleges are placed into one of four geographic categories (North, South, Midwest, and West).</p>
<p>What are National Universities? There are 262 national universities164 public, 98 privatebased on the 2006 Basic categories established by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. National universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors as well as master’s and doctoral degrees. In many cases, they place strong emphasis on research and receive federal money to support their research endeavors.</p>
<p>What are National Liberal Arts Colleges? There are 266 liberal arts colleges, 28 of them public. These schools emphasize undergraduate education. To be included, colleges must award at least 50 percent of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines, such as languages and literature, biology and life sciences, philosophy, cultural studies, and psychology.</p>
<p>What are Regional Universities Regional Baccalaureate Colleges? Like national universities, regional universities offer a full range of undergraduate programs and provide graduate education at the master’s level. However, they differ by offering few, if any, doctoral programs. Of the 572 regional universities, 254 are public. The 319 regional colleges, including 76 public institutions, focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than 50 percent of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines. The regional colleges category includes institutions where at least 10 percent of the undergraduate degrees awarded are bachelor’s. The regional universities and regional colleges are placed into one of four geographic categories (North, South, Midwest, and West).</p>
<p>What are First and Second tiers, and why are the schools listed alphabetically in the Second Tier and not number ranked? U.S. News publishes the numbered rankings of approximately the top 75 percent of schools in each of the categories. The remaining schools are placed in the bottom, or Second Tier, based on their overall score in their category, and listed alphabetically.</p>
<p>Tier 2 is approximately the bottom next 25 percent of schools that are just beneath the numbered ranked schools in the top three-fourths in terms of their rankings in that category. In other words, schools listed in Tier 2 are ranked lower than all those that numerically ranked. In that particular ranking category of schools the Tier 2 schools are the lowest ranked.</p>
<p>We believe that the data are complete enough to numerically rank schools in the top 75 percent of each category, given our robust methodology. Another key reason we can rank that many schools is that the quality of the data we collect has improved over the years, so that it is now rich enough to rank more schools numerically. This change will also reduce ranking volatility, since far fewer schools will now drop in and out of the numerical rankings in any given year.</p>
<p>Schools in Tier 2 are not numerically ranked since the data is not as complete and we want the numerical rankings to emphasize the top schools.</p>
<p>What measures of academic quality does U.S. News use in its rankings? Indicators used to measure academic quality fall into seven broad areas: peer assessment; retention and graduation of students; faculty resources; student selectivity; financial resources; alumni giving; and (for national universities and national liberal arts colleges) “graduation rate performance,” the difference between the proportion of students expected to graduate and the proportion who do and high school counselor ratings. The indicators include both “input measures,” which reflect the quality of students, faculty, and other resources used in education, and “outcome measures,” which signal how well the institution educates its student body.</p>
<p>Where do the data used in the rankings come from? Schools report most of the information directly to us. Each year, U.S. News sends an extensive questionnaire to all accredited four-year colleges and universities in late winter through spring 2010. U.S. News is a founding member of the Common Data Set initiative. U.S. News incorporates items from the CDS and unique proprietary items on its survey. When the surveys are returned, we enter and evaluate the data, checking for possible errors and consistency with related information. For example, SAT scores must fall in a particular range, and the score reported as the 25th percentile must be less than the score reported as the 75th percentile. Where possible, we double-check the data with information from other sources. For example, statistics about faculty salaries are compared with information collected by the American Association of University Professors. For schools that don’t return the questionnaires or don’t answer all the questions, U.S. News uses comparable data from the Council for Aid to Education, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the National Center for Education Statistics, data collected by U.S. News in previous years, and data pulled from those schools’ own websites.</p>
<p>Which measure of quality is most important? First, remember that each measure that U.S. News uses in its rankings captures some important dimension of the academic program. The weight (expressed as a percentage) tells you the relative importance that U.S. News places on each measure. For national universities and national liberal arts colleges, the U.S. News ranking formula gives the most weight (22.5 percent) to peer assessment scores a combination of the academic peer score at 15.0 percent and the high schools counselor rating score at 7.5 percent, because a diploma from a distinguished college helps graduates get good jobs or gain admission to top-notch graduate programs. (Synovate, a Chicago-based opinion-research firm, collected the peer assessment data.) For these schools, the faculty resources and the graduation and retention measures are also weighted relatively highly (20 percent). For regional universities and regional colleges, the ranking formula gives the peer assessment and the graduation and retention measures a weight of 25 percent each. Graduation and retention are given a higher weight (compared with the national universities and national liberal arts colleges categories) because the ranking formula for the national universities and national liberal arts categories includes an additional indicator related to them: graduation rate performance. This indicator was given a weight of 7.5 percent. We recommend that prospective students consider which indicators are especially important to them and look at those individual elements as well as the school’s overall rank. (The website’s search and sort capabilities make it simple to locate schools that are strong in a particular area.)</p>
<p>How did U.S. News decide how much weight to give each indicator in its ranking formula? Analysts at U.S. News have chosen the weights used in the ranking formula. Our views of the appropriate weights may differ from those of other higher-education experts. The weights were chosen based on years of reporting about education, on reviews of research about education, and after consultation with experts in higher education. Over time, including the change we made for the 2011 edition, we have placed greater weight on the “outcome” measures of quality (such as graduation rate) and de-emphasized the “input” measures (such as entering test scores and financial resources). This change is consistent with a growing emphasis by education experts on “outcomes” in assessing the performance of complex institutions such as colleges.</p>
<p>Why did my school’s rank go up (or down) this year? Each school’s circumstances are unique, but we can tell you in general terms why rank changes.</p>
<p>In the 2011 edition of Best Colleges, many schools in the national university and national liberal arts colleges ranking categories changed rank compared to last year because of the methodology changes that U.S. News made. These methodology changes are described in detail in question 4 above. In general, a college’s rank changes when its performance and its data (relative to one of its peers) varies on one or more measures of academic quality used by U.S. News in the rankings. In other words, a school’s rank can vary because its performance on a measure changes or because the performance of other schools in the same peer group changes. You can compare the data on specific indicators from this year and last year to get some idea of the possible reason for the change. In addition, some changes in rank reflect changes in the U.S. News methodology as described above, which have been made to improve the quality of the rankings. This may make it hard to identify the precise cause of a change.</p>
<p>Why do private schools fare better than publics in the U.S. News rankings? Overall, private colleges and universities do better on several measures in our ranking model, including student selectivity, graduation and retention rates, and class size. Because of their mission to serve students in their state, publics generally don’t score as high on selectivity as private colleges that have more stringent admissions standards. In addition, public colleges and universities tend to have lower graduation and retention rates and larger classes. Finally, the public schools often lack the financial resources of the better-endowed private universities or have suffered from budget cuts due to the current economic recession.</p>
<p>U.S. News does publish separate rankings of the top public schools in each category.</p>
<p>Why doesn’t U.S. News rank undergraduate specialty schools in fine arts, engineering, and business? Fifty-eight of the approximately 1,400 accredited undergraduate institutions in the United States fall into a specialty category because they award most or all of their degrees in fine arts, performing arts, business, or engineering. These schools offer an important alternative for students aspiring to careers in particular fields. U.S. News provides pertinent data for each school but does not rank these institutions because there are too few in each category to allow a fair comparison and because their specialized focus would require a different system of ranking. However, U.S. News does rank 446 undergraduate business programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and 370 undergraduate engineering programs accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. These rankings are based solely on peer assessment surveys that were sent in the spring of 2010. The results of this survey are available on our website.</p>
<p>Does U.S. News consider economic diversity in its rankings? For the fifth year in a row, we have included the proportion of the student body receiving Pell grants in our predicted graduation rate formula. Pell grants are an important indicator of how many low-income students attend a school, and adding them resulted in a model that better captures the school’s student body and improves that indicator. More about Pell grants can be found in our Economic Diversity table.</p>
<p>What does it mean when a school is marked as RNP or Unranked?This year, U.S. News has added one new label to all the schools in the Second Tier of the National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities, and Regional Colleges categories. All these schools are listed as RNP or Rank Not Published to explain why some schools don’t have a numerical ranking and score listed next to them.</p>
<p>RNP or Rank Not Published means that U.S. News did calculate a numerical ranking and score for that school, but decided for editorial reasons that since the school ranked below the U.S. News cut-off that U.S. News would not publish the ranking for that school on usnews.com. U.S. News will supply schools marked with RNP with their numerical rankings, if they submit a request following the procedures listed in the Information for School Officials file in the About the Rankings section. Schools marked as RNP are listed alphabetically.</p>
<p>Unranked means that U.S. News did not calculate a numerical ranking for that school. The school did not qualify to be numerically ranked by U.S. News. Schools marked as Unranked are listed alphabetically and are listed below those marked as RNP or Rank Not Published. U.S. News believes that because these schools are unable to report key educational characteristics or because they have certain other characteristics, it would be unfair to try to compare them statistically with the other schools that are part of the rankings. There is a more detailed explanation above and in general methodology for why a school is Unranked.</p>
<p>Using the rankings</p>
<p>What is the best way for students and their parents to use the rankings? Students can use the rankings to create an initial list of schools to consider, to narrow down that list, and to compare overall academic quality. Students can also use the data underlying the rankings to identify schools with specific characteristics that they value. However, the editors of U.S. News believe rankings are only one of many criteria students should consider in choosing a college. Simply because a school is top in its category does not mean it is the top choice for everyone. A prospective student’s academic and professional ambitions, personal preferences, financial resources, and scholastic record, as well as a school’s size, atmosphere, and location, should play major roles in determining a college choice. Moreover, it is crucial to remember that schools separated by only a few places in the rankings are extremely close in academic quality.</p>
<p>How can I find the rank of a particular school? It’s easy! U.S. News publishes the rankings in three places: in the September issue of the magazine; in a separate college guidebook, the 2011 Edition Best Colleges (available for purchase at newsstands, by calling 1-800-836-6397, or in our Online Store); and on our website (with a Premium Online Edition available, too). The magazine issue contains some of the rankings of national universities, national liberal arts colleges, and top-ranked regional universities and regional colleges, as well as information about quality indicators used in the rankings. If you are using the college guidebook (the most complete print version of the rankings), the index, where the schools are listed alphabetically, gives page numbers of any table in which a particular school appears. The index also shows the page number for the school’s entry in our directory, which is filled with facts about each college and university.</p>
<p>Our website has the most complete data and, in some cases, more extended rankings than are published in the guidebook. If you are using our website’s college search, simply type in the full name of the school (make sure you spell it correctly) and click on “Search.” That will take you to our online directory. The website also has search and sort features to help customize a college search. If you can’t find a particular school, make sure to see that you are looking under the right category. The school may be too small (enrollment below 200) or too specialized to be rankedalthough we do provide data on these institutions in the guidebook and on the Web. For those interested in the most comprehensive data on each school and the most extensive rankings in each category, the Premium Online Edition has all of that.</p>
<p>How can I find out a school’s rank from last year (or an earlier year)? You can look it up in a past issue. Bear in mind that changes in a school’s rank may reflect changes in other schools’ performance or changes in our methods and not just changes in the school’s programs. The most comprehensive archive of the rankings can be found on our website, which now has 10 years of PDFs of all Best Colleges and Best Graduate Schools print guidebooks ranking tables from the 2000-2009 editions, plus methodologies, available for sale. Note that these are not the full extended rankings available through the Premium Online Edition; they are the print version of rankings. This archive does not have the 2010 edition from last year.</p>
<p>If you do want to track down a back issuedespite this warninghere are the publication dates for all the issues or online publication dates of America’s Best Colleges and Best College Values/Paying for College</p>
<p>They no longer rank schools as 3rd or 4th tier. I would bold thew part that talk about that, but don’t see that option.</p>