US News is a Joke

Just saw an article about Columbia moving from 2nd to 18th in the US News rankings LOL. Maybe the critters at Columbia GS dragged them down. This huge drop demonstrates how easily data can be manipulated and more importantly how bull$)%t US News rankings are to begin with. Anyone who decides where they attend college based off US News is as idiotic as the rankings themselves. 
 

By the way all you non targets are still not even human

19 Comments
 

It’s because Columbia lied on some of their data that caused them to be as high as #2. Being 18 is somewhat of a punishment because all of these institutions want the best rankings to receive the extra application fees from kids just applying to the top schools according to the bullshit rankings sites

 
Most Helpful

Literally, nothing is wrong with them. These people are mentally sick and insecure if they base their self worth on a school that's not an ivy. Vanderbilt and JHU are some of the best schools in the world. 

 
Controversial

If your school isn't on the top 100, rankings are irrelevant. You're going to end up working at the same back office job if you went to Alabama University ($) or George Washington University ($$$$).

And even if the school is in the top 100, rankings aren't fluid and generally retain its reputation for generations. For example, the top 3 schools will ALWAYS be Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. IB target school rankings are far more accurate than whatever trash US News reports to uninformed students and parents.

 

Around a decade ago, Columbia was ranked 15. They have been rapidly rising through US News rankings since, but it was recently revealed by one of their statistics professors through a thorough analysis that they did this through falsifying their data. The school denied this at first, but then when US News followed up, the school admitted their data was flawed and withdrew from last years ranking. This year they got screwed when their actual published numbers were used.
 

Columbia is definitely a great school, but you think this school is great just because you’ve seen them ranked highly for the past decade. They did that by lying, and nobody could possibly think their #2 ranking made sense. I would be unsurprised if students use this opportunity for a class action lawsuit like they did regarding Covid fees. 

 

If you ain't cheatin' you ain't tryin'.

Honestly though, it's almost satire how blatantly US News tried to trash Columbia. The school provided no data this year because it tried to withdraw from the rankings, but US News said that they just pulled data from wherever they could (like US Dept. of Education). For a lot of stuff, they actually had no data and said they "assigned competitive set values" that were below the average value for peers. They outright admit they fudged the numbers -- it's a complete joke.

 

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