http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/raleigh-nc/north-carolina-state-raleigh-2972

New rankings came out and NCSU dropped from 88 to 111 place Very depressing, we fell out of the Top 100.

8/16/2010 11:38:58 PM

any explanation as to why the drop in ranking? i didnt see anything really explained in the link.

8/17/2010 11:07:50 AM

You will probably need to purchase either the book or the premium edition for that.

This is how they calculate rank though
http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2010/08/17/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights-2011.html

8/17/2010 11:59:05 AM

we'll still get the top 10 best value college like usual

8/17/2010 12:11:19 PM

After the 20% tuition hike/gouging this year, let's hope so.

8/17/2010 7:09:36 PM

Not at all surprising.

8/17/2010 9:13:46 PM

IMO the only version of the US News rankings worth its salt was the 1999 one (I wish I knew how NCSU ranked then): http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/education/the-best-the-top-the-most.html?pagewanted=2

Quote :

"it's easy to guess who's going to end up on top: Harvard, Yale and Princeton round out the first three essentially every year. In fact, when asked how he knew his system was sound, Mel Elfin, the rankings' founder, often answered that he knew it because those three schools always landed on top. When a new lead statistician, Amy Graham, changed the formula in 1999 to what she considered more statistically valid, the California Institute of Technology jumped to first place. Ms. Graham soon left, and a slightly modified system pushed Princeton back to No. 1 the next year. (In 2001, Ms. Graham and I [Nicholas Thompson] co-wrote an article dissecting the U.S. News rankings for Washington Monthly, and as an undergraduate at Stanford in 1996, I helped found a student group that was critical of rankings.)"

...and that is why: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0109.graham.thompson.html

Anyway let's look at some other college-rating systems, going in ascending order of validity IMO...

Forbes is all about becoming notable, having professors well-liked on ratemyprofessors (lol) and taking on little debt, and by those measures NCSU ranked 360 out of 610 in 2010: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/94/best-colleges-10_Americas-Best-Colleges_Rank_15.html

What Will They Learn? is one of the less-objectionable efforts from the Right, concentrating on the breadth of a school's distribution requirements, and giving an A for 7 or 6, a B for 5 or 4, a C for 3, a D for 2, or an F for 1 or 0 of the following 7 subjects required of all students: Composition, Literature, Foreign Language, US History, Economics, Mathematics, and Science.
NCSU got a B in 2010 with 5 of the 7 areas; keep in mind that only 16 schools got an A, most schools (including NCSU) do not require courses in US History or Economics for all students, and the ratings are skewed against the more free-wheeling elite liberal-arts colleges and universities in favor of the military academies and smaller more traditional liberal-arts colleges, like Thomas Aquinas College, the only school surveyed requiring all 7 competencies of all students: http://whatwilltheylearn.com/schools/states/NC.html

If you look at where students prefer to go once they have applied and been accepted at multiple places, NCSU ranks 200th among all American colleges and universities and 86th among national universities in 2010: http://college.mychances.net/college-rankings.php?thisYear=2010&thisCategory=National

The G-Factor measured the visibility of international universities in 2006 on "The Google" and NCSU ranked 66: http://universitymetrics.com/gfactor2006top300

The Ranking Web of World Universities has a similar aim but is more focused on the availability of their scholarly publications on the Web; in 2009, NCSU was 26th in the US and in North America and 27th in the world: http://www.webometrics.info/top100_continent.asp?cont=usa_canada

Finally, the Washington Monthly has spearheaded an effort from the Left to rank universities and liberal-arts colleges in the US according to social mobility, cutting-edge research, and giving back to the country; in the most recent ranking in 2009, NCSU was 104th among national universities (the rankings of liberal-arts colleges are completely separate): http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings/national_university_rank.php

...what, didja think I was just trying to flatter the NC Staters among us?

8/17/2010 9:26:31 PM

It's all a big scam

8/18/2010 10:19:09 AM

U.S. News is fo' sho'

I mean they actually make people pay $texas for the rankings

8/19/2010 3:40:59 AM