<p>There’s a long history to this, which has been discussed on this board numerous times. Basically, “in the beginning” of the US News rankings, Reed was right up among the top tier schools (maybe even top 10). Then USNews went to their numerology, and Reed decided that it wouldn’t play this game and didn’t supply data. In retaliation, the next year USNews dumped Reed into the 4th tier! Never mind that most of the data was available to this “news organization” to gather if it was really interested. This action on the part of USNews brought a certain amount of negative publicity to USNews, and the following year it “placed” Reed into the second tier, despite the fact by “peer reputation” Reed was rated above half of the schools in the so-called first tier lac’s in the USNews rankings (and this despite what many regard as an Eastern bias to these rankings). Based on the information that USNews actually uses in its rankings, it’s hard to know where Reed should truly be ranked (that is, if one believes in these rankings at all). Assuming that USNews really wants to rank Reed fairly, that is using the same criteria as it applies to other schools, then Reed suffers from its relatively high admit rate, low “yield,” and low retention. But again it’s hard to know whether Reed really is significantly worse than many of the so-called first-tier schools even on those criteria.</p>
<p>If you want an outstanding education and are not mainly driven by the reputation defined by a news magazine, you might want to consider Reed. Several other organizations/evaluators rank Reed among the best colleges in the country. USNews isn’t God.</p>