Why?
Iāve seen a touch of that here or there, but I do feel most of the kids looking at these LACs are actually picking favorites for some individual reasons, are happy if they end up at their favorite, and do not particularly care what US News or kids on Reddit or whatever think about all that.
Iāve used this (borrowed) concept before, but in some sense the Claremont Colleges are the closest we have to the constituent colleges at Oxford or Cambridge. And in fact, there are plenty of ārankingsā of various sorts available of those constituent colleges. But most of those Oxbridge kids end up being fond of their college, and not thinking it would be wildly better to be at a āhigher-rankedā college. And I do get the sense the Claremont kids, and indeed other consortium kids, mostly think the same way.
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I can confirm this sentiment for my D26 and other things Iāve seen/heard. She is applying to two of the Claremontās Pitzer and Scripps because they both fit her well for different reasons. Kids from her school get into each of the other three every year and she would be a competitive candidate for at least one of those. But, she is not interested in going to that one and the other two would be bad fits. Our experience at Pitzer and Scripps visits is most of those kids couldnāt care less about the rankings of the others. They are going to the one that was right for their academic and social interests. Family friendās kid who is at one says the same. Sure, some kids are at one of them because they didnāt get into another that was first choice, but a lot of kids are picking the one they like best.
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Yeah, try to find Cooper Union, Olin, Rose-Hulman. Pratt is unranked but they like RISD. I can see why Julliard is separated, but are the STEM schools so different from Babson or Bentley?
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They actually have an entirely separate ranking for these colleges:
Whether you got on this list or the LAC list depended on your Carnegie Classification.
And actually, Carnegie just overhauled the classification system in ways that could have profound implications for the structure of these lists in the future. US News has this interesting note about this subject:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/ranking-category-definitions
In February 2021, Carnegie released its final updates, called the 2021 update, to the categories, including the Basic system. U.S. News followed the Carnegie 2021 update for the fourth consecutive year in its 2026 Best Colleges rankings. Although the Carnegie classification has since implemented a new framework, we used the 2021 framework because it was the latest available at the time work began on data collection for the most recent rankings edition.
This seems to be implying they may be planning to use the new system going forward.
The relevance to this particular issue is the following.
As of 2021, tech-focused doctoral research universities like MIT were in the same category as, say, Harvard. Harvey Mudd is in the same category as LACs like Williams. And then colleges like Rose-Hulman were in Engineering at institutions without a PhD program.
For 2025, Carnegie has changed things such that all of institutions like MIT, Mudd, and Rose-Hulman are in the new Special Focus: Technology, Engineering, and Sciences category. Harvard is in Mixed Undergraduate/Graduate-Doctorate, and Williams is in Special Focus: Arts and Sciences.
The new Special Focus: Technology, Engineering, and Sciences category also got institutions like Caltech, CMU, Georgia Tech, RPI, Cooper Union, and WPI.
If US News actually incorporates this change, this would really change things quite a bit. I actually think it makes more sense than the current system, understanding no system is really going to make a lot of sense.
But I could see it being controversial to āseparateā those more tech-focused universities from other universities.
In contrast, I doubt if many people will care if Harvey Mudd is moved into a category with Cooper Union.
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I think if you look at the way most kids look at schools, it may be better just to focus on school size (population), and forget trying to separate them by programs.
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