US News and World Report recently announced that beginning with the 2021 Best Colleges rankings they will include standardized test blind colleges in their rankings (https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/articles/2020-06-17/us-news-to-start-ranking-test-blind-schools.) I understand this move, given the current coronavirus environment where so many colleges at all levels of selectivity are at least temporarily going test optional and when the largest university system – University of California system – is moving away from SAT/ACTs to perhaps their own standardized tests over the next few years.
A look back at 25 years of US News Best Colleges ranking data
This seems like an opportune moment to reflect back on the history of the US News “Best Colleges” rankings. Love them or hate them, the US News Best Colleges have been a fixture in the world of college admissions since they first came out in the 1980s. It’s clear that the rankings strongly influence which colleges many students apply to, and also affect colleges’ admissions practices including emphases on selectivity, yield, and consideration of standardized test scores. While there are strongly held opinions on the good and the bad aspects of US News rankings, I’m focusing on reviewing the data from the past quarter century rather than delving into a discussion of whether they should or shouldn’t drive behavior.
Students might be wondering if the reputation value of getting into a “best college” is likely to persist over time, especially if they are “investing” in getting into and paying for a highly ranked college. How much fluctuation is there from year to year? And how much do they change over a longer time span? I looked back at the rankings for the past 25 years, and I was struck at the persistence of the “best” colleges.
The Top 30 US News Best National Universities from 1996-2020
Despite the notoriety that comes with a 1 or 2 place movement for a university, the top 30 have remained extremely stable. I calculated which colleges might be considered the top 30 National Universities using a long-term 25-year rankings average (1996-2020), and also compared that to a short-term rankings average of the most recent 5 years (2016-2020). Both perspectives show the exact same 30 colleges falling into the top 30, with not much movement between the long-term 25 year ranking average and the most recent 5 years:
Here is the top 30 National Universities data in chart form. Note that US News often has ties, so not every ranking spot is populated in every year, which is why there are occasionally clumps (for example, in 2020 there are 6 colleges tied at #40, so the next colleges were ranked #46.) Click the chart to sort on any column (for example to rank in order of the 25 year averages.)
For the stat geeks and visual thinkers among us (guilty!) here is a box and whisker plot of the data for each of the top 30 national universities over this 25 year period. The middle 50% of observations are shown in the blue and green boxes, with the black line showing the full range of observations and the hash marks at the highest and lowest ranking over the 25 years. I added the 25 year and most recent 5 year averages as red and blue dots (respectively) to the box and whisker plot:
The top 30 US News National Universities have been very consistent over the past 25 years
Here are a few facts that point to how consistent the top 30 have been:
- The top 5 over the 25-year period – Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT- have never ranked lower than 7th.
- The 16 universities with the highest 25-year average rankings have monopolized the top 15 placements, with only Rice (twice) and Emory (once) ever ranking higher than 14.
- The 8 universities with 25 year average rankings of 13-19 have very consistently ranked in the teens. Between all 8 universities they have collectively slipped into the top 10 only 6 times and on only 2 occasions ranked as high as 22.
- The 9 universities with 25 year average rankings of 21-28 have never ranked below 19 or above 31 throughout the 25 year period.
- With the exception of USC and U Chicago, all the other colleges have stayed within +/- 5 ranking slots of their 25-year average for at least 23 out of the 25 years, with many in that range for all 25 years.
The fact that these rankings have remained so stable means that these are “baked in” to many people’s mental models. An entire generation has applied to college, enter the workforce, and risen to management positions responsible for hiring with these ranges of rankings in mind.
The most dramatic change is in USC’s rankings, as they have been consistently climbing over this 25-year period (from the low 40s in the late 1990s to the low 20s in the last few years), and University of Chicago which has risen from the low teens over the last several years. More moderate movers are Columbia, and UCLA (climbing) and Caltech and WUSTL (dropping).
The 31-50 US News Best National Universities from 1996-2020
Here is the data for the next group of 31-50 National Universities over this 25 year period:
And here is the box and whisker plot of the full range of data:
Although there is clearly more variation in this group than the “top 30” spots, most universities remain within a consistent range other than a handful of movers. The next 18 colleges (31-49 in the 25-year rankings) were within +/- 7 spots of their 25-year average ranking for 20 or more of the 25 years. While most colleges have staying within a few spots, there are a few that have moved over a wider range, including Lehigh, U. Washington, Boston University, UC Santa Barbara, UW Madison, U. Florida, and Penn State.
Note that this group has more than 20 universities, as the frequent ties in US News rankings and the turnover around the 50th ranking spot means all of these are in either the 25 year or most recent 5 year 31-50 spots. Note also that this list is missing Northeastern, which has shot up dramatically over the past few years to average 42.0 over the past 5 years (I could not find the rankings for all 25 years for Northeastern.)