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US News Rankings: Wake top 25

In a surprising shake-up, U.S. News has tumbled eight spots in this year's edition of our annual Super-Official College-Rankings Rankings. Some analysts attributed the fall to the magazine's reputational factors, while frustrated U.S. News supporters questioned our methodology, which is in fact almost entirely arbitrary. Princeton Review, meanwhile, captured the top spot once again on the strength of a system that grades colleges according to key metrics like “Happiest Students,” “Financial Aid Not So Great,” and “Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians.” But enough with the boring words and sentences—let’s get to the numbers already! Herewith, our very official, fully authoritative, top-15 college rankings systems for 2014*:

3. Parchment​
4. Shanghai​
5. Rugg's​
7. Playboy​
8. The Gourman Report (last updated in 1997)​
9. Informal survey of your friends​
11. Throwing darts at a dartboard​
13. Your father's strong opinions based on his memories of where he and his buddies went to school 32 years ago​
14. U.S. News​
15. Forbes​
Correction, Sept. 10, 2013: This post initially referred to the Super-Official College-Rankings Rankings as a “top-16” list. Only 15 rankings systems were strong enough to make the cut, with Young America’s Foundation’s list of the Top Conservative Colleges falling just short.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_t...s_in_arbitrary_college_rankings_rankings.html
 
I think most other lists have us around 50-60, though they usually include smaller liberal arts schools as well.
 
Saw that our undergrad enrollment listed at 4815 continues to creep upwards towards 5000.
 
morrison2951 said:
Saw that our undergrad enrollment listed at 4815 continues to creep upwards towards 5000.
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That really upsets me. Have they stated publically what their intentions are with the enrollment size - how high are they going to go?
 
I can instantly tell how smart someone is based on how they react when I tell them I went to Wake.
 
wake20 said:
I think most other lists have us around 50-60, though they usually include smaller liberal arts schools as well.
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What's sort of weird is that we are #25 in Natl Universities, but those 'smaller liberal arts schools' lists also contain schools like Richmond and W&L which are Universities, not colleges, with grad schools and such, along with the Davidsons of the world. I wonder what the cutoff is. Richmond and W&L have law and other grad schools. Not med schools tho.
 
The cutoff for Wake was early 90s vs mid-90s.
 
TheTwinAndreBen said:
What's sort of weird is that we are #25 in Natl Universities, but those 'smaller liberal arts schools' lists also contain schools like Richmond and W&L which are Universities, not colleges, with grad schools and such, along with the Davidsons of the world. I wonder what the cutoff is. Richmond and W&L have law and other grad schools. Not med schools tho.
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Coworker from Villanova asked the same thing. I told him to get a real football team. That didn't go over well, nor did it make sense.
 
Charlotte is a solid top 5 school between Princeton and Yale with lots of upside potential.
 
TheTwinAndreBen said:
What's sort of weird is that we are #25 in Natl Universities, but those 'smaller liberal arts schools' lists also contain schools like Richmond and W&L which are Universities, not colleges, with grad schools and such, along with the Davidsons of the world. I wonder what the cutoff is. Richmond and W&L have law and other grad schools. Not med schools tho.
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Not perfect definitions or dividing lines, but here's what US News has to say about it:

First, schools are categorized by their mission, which is derived from the breakdown of types of higher education institutions as refined by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2010. The Carnegie classification has been the basis of the Best Colleges ranking category system since our first rankings were published in 1983, given that it is used extensively as the accepted standard by higher education researchers.

The U.S. Department of Education and many higher education associations use the system to organize their data and to determine colleges' eligibility for grant money, for example. The category names we use are our own – National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities and Regional Colleges – but their definitions rely on the Carnegie principles.

National Universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and Ph.D. programs, and emphasize faculty research. National Liberal Arts Colleges focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education. They award at least 50 percent of their degrees in the arts and sciences.
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As I am sure you are all aware, Wake was #1 for a number of years in a row in the regional university category before we moved up to the national category. I am not sure what prompted the move - I had the impression is was our choice somehow.

Probably so we could justify the meteoric rise in tuition.
 
scooter84 said:
As I am sure you are all aware, Wake was #1 for a number of years in a row in the regional university category before we moved up to the national category. I am not sure what prompted the move - I had the impression is was our choice somehow.

Probably so we could justify the meteoric rise in tuition.
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The small privates have crazy tuition too, maybe crazier.
 
PhDeac said:
The small privates have crazy tuition too, maybe crazier.
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You're right, of course, but I wasn't saying they were increasing enrollment to jack up tuition - I was saying we went from the regional category to the national category so we could justify the increase. Using the twisted logic of the administration, people might be more willing to pay exorbitant tuition for a national university versus a regional one??
 
Caturdayredux said:
Charlotte is a solid top 5 school between Princeton and Yale with lots of upside potential.
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Seriously. Charlotte is definitely a top five school in Charlotte.

I think it's something like:
1. Queens
2. Charlotte Country Day
3. Charlotte Latin
4. North Meck
5. College of Charlotte
 
It also should be noted that Wake is one of the few top 25 schools that isn't in or near a major city.
 
Caturdayredux said:
It also should be noted that Wake is one of the few top 25 schools that isn't in or near a major city.
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Yale
UVA
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Princeton
Notre Dame
UVA

That's 1/3 of the list.
 
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