The U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings of the country’s best colleges always draws a lot of attention — and a good share of criticism.
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The publication tweaked this year’s rankings after some schools, including Harvard’s law and medical schools, said they’d no longer participate. The undergraduate rankings, which were released Monday, said it considered new factors this year, dropped some and altered others.
The U.S. News & World Report now puts greater emphasis in its rankings on graduation rates, including for the first time on first-generation college students, as well as graduation rates for lower-income Pell grant recipients. Student debt are weighed more heavily and earnings compared to a high school graduate are considered for the first time.
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Other factors are no longer factored in, including alumni giving, class size and the percent of faculty with the highest degree offering in their field.
No amount of altering calculations could substantially change where MIT and Harvard landed. The two schools ranked second and third in the U.S. News & World Report’s new rankings, just as they did last year. They’re regularly among the top of other college rankings as well.
This year’s new methodology meant substantially different rankings for other Massachusetts schools, however, including Brandeis University (#60) and Tufts University (#40), the latter of which also suffered surprisingly low rankings in a Wall Street Journal list that was released earlier this month. The Journal's rankings most heavily considered graduates' earnings, along with graduation rates, and less on diversity or reputation among peers.
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Among other New England colleges, Connecticut's Yale University ranked #5, Rhode Island's Brown University #9, and New Hampshire's Dartmouth College was #18. Boston College (#39) and Boston University (#43) also ranked inside the top 50.
