2024 US News rankings

[MV pony]

SMU at 89? Baylor and tam with lower rankings? What happened?

[deucetz]

New Ranking formula.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/us/u ... nking.html

"The company discarded five factors that often favored wealthy colleges and together made up 18 percent of a school’s score, including undergraduate class sizes, alumni giving rates and high school class standing."

[Mustangs_Maroons]

I have to say these changes are pretty ridiculous to me and quite honest, seem to be politically driven. I mean, how are class sizes not relevant to an UG education, or HS class standing, or the quality of the faculty (ie, terminal degree), and now they shift an important part to to first generation or low-income criteria. They even decreased criteria such as financial resources per student. The big public schools are the winners here and not all for valid reasons, IMO. The one criteria which is not bad is publications by professors, etc, but that also is strongly in favor of large public schools and select private schools. The losers here are schools like SMU, Tulane, etc. Some of the wealthiest private schools won't see as much of a change because they already have key parts of their admissions geared towards certain initiatives. To see UChicago fall to 12th is ridiculous or to see Dartmouth at 18th.

https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/ ... %20degrees.

[tristatecoog]

Wake Forest equal to Texas A&M and Virginia Tech makes total sense. My nephew got into A&M but not lower ranked Clemson and not even waitlisted at Wake. Totally different experience at a school like SMU, Tulane or Wake relative to Big Public U.

[EastStang]

One of the big new criteria is affordability. They whack the private schools because of their tuition, room and board charges compared to state schools which are much lower.

[SMUguy]

Wake is listed (on some site ... no ideal how accurate it is) at $62K per year. That cost should hurt, by the listed formula.
It's also a fantastic school.

[deucetz]

The total estimated cost at Wake Forest is $87,622 (tuition is $64,758)*

The total estimated cost at SMU is $86,130 (tuition is $64,460)**

* https://financialaid.wfu.edu/cost-of-at ... rgraduate/
** https://www.smu.edu/EnrollmentServices/ ... laid/Costs