Recently, the US News and World Report published its “version” of the 2014 best colleges in the nation in its annual report. To get a better understanding of the methodology behind the rankings, I examined information on their website and came up with the following interesting facts:
- The methodology is based on a quantitative formula
- The formula is based on key indicators that “education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality”
- First, schools are categorized using the Carnegie classification system
- Next, data is gathered from each institution on up to 16 key indicators of academic excellence
- Each factor is assigned a weight that according to the website, “reflects our judgment about how much a measure matters”
- Finally, colleges and universities are ranked in each category against their peers based on their composite weighted score.
I was curious to know more about the “up to 16 key indicators” used in the formula and so I continued to review the site for a more detailed explanation. Interestingly enough, though I did not find 16 or more, the following key indicators were cited as being included in the “new methodology” used for the rankings:
- High school class standing
- Graduation rate performance
- Undergraduate academic reputation
- Retention
- Faculty resources
- Student selectivity
- Financial resources
- Alumni giving rate
I did not find much information provided to explain the “judgment of how much each measure/indicators matter” but I did find that some of the factors including student selectivity, the alumni giving rate, and the undergraduate academic reputation seemed very broad and subjective for a “quantitative” study… At any rate, though I read through the rankings by institutional type, I only included some institutions that were listed as 10 of the best for your view below:
- Princeton University
- Harvard University
- Yale University
- Columbia University
- Stanford University
- The University of Chicago
- Duke University
- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- The University of Pennsylvania
- The California Institute of Technology
More information can be found on the US News & World Report 2014 College Rankings and Formula at http://www.usnews.com/education and searching for the 2014 best college rankings