What schools are considered Tier 2 and Tier 3?

gadad
Sat, 01 Jan 2011 21:21:42 +0000

My guess is that because US News charges a fee for the use of their logo on a school’s website, they found that they made a lot more money by calling the top 75% “Tier 1” instead of just the top 25%. Now a university that’s ranked 196th out of 262 can pay the fee and put the logo front-and-center while advertising “Among the top tier of American universities according to US News!”

If you want to know what schools would have been in US News’ Tiers 1, 2, 3, and 4 under their old terminology, look at their rankings here: [National Universities Rankings - Best College - Education - US News](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings)

Schools 1-50 would have been Tier 1, schools 51-131 would have been Tier 2, schools 132-196 would have been Tier 3, and the rest would have been Tier 4. But be aware that US News has no official authority to rank colleges; they’re just out to sell magazines. Feel free to decide your own rankings. We college geeks on CC like to pay attention to US News’ lists, but the rest of society couldn’t care less about them.