What schools are considered Tier 2 and Tier 3?

haavain
Sat, 01 Jan 2011 19:33:41 +0000

There’s really no such thing. “Tiers” are an arbitrary invention of the US News college rankings.

[Frequently Asked Questions: College Rankings - US News and World Report](http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2010/08/17/frequently-asked-questions-college-rankings.html#12)



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.



It used to be different: there were four tiers. Tier 1 was the first fifty schools, Tier 2 50-100, and so on and so forth. Then Tier 2 got absorbed into Tier 1, and finally they just got rid of that system altogether.