<p>Hey guys</p>
<p>I’m a graduate from WPI in Biomedical/Electrical Engineering. There are a lot of reasons that WPI is ranked lower than other schools that I know of… and in my opinion a lot of them are stupid reasons. Unfortunately, the school is aware of these reasons and is trying to change things in order to change their rankings.</p>
<p>1) They don’t have enough women. When I entered the school had 20% women. For some reason this actually effects how a school is ranked overall… because rankings aren’t focused purely on academics but the lifestyle of the school as a whole. Since I entered I’ve been seeing more and more girls accepted the school… and to be honest I think the standards for admittance are going down in order to try to change the school’s demographics.</p>
<p>2) WPI is purely a technical school, thus it does not have programs (e.g. nursing or business) that help schools get ranked higher.</p>
<p>3) Probably most importantly, the top US News Ranking rates schools that are research powerhouses highest. These schools are schools in which their graduate/professional schools are much more known than their undergraduates, because they spit out more publications and have a lot of funding for their research. WPI is mainly an undergraduate focused school, where the undergraduates do a lot of research (look up MQP/IQP publications, just google WPI MQP) but it is not published as thesis work or other research would be. Unfortunately for WPI, because they are ranked in the same category as national research schools, they are continually compared to schools that have a large graduate population whereas WPI’s is much smaller (~1500).</p>