U.S. News & World Report 2017 College Rankings: OSU Moves Down, Miami Goes Up

Most Ohio schools retained their spot in the highly regarded U.S. News & World Report 2017 College rankings released Tuesday.

Case Western Reserve University stayed in the same spot in they were at in 2016 at 37, and The Ohio State University, ranked 52nd in 2016, slid back 2 spots to 54 on the current list.

Miami University was ranked at ranked at No. 79th, went up three spots from 82nd last year.

Here’s how other Ohio schools fared and their respective categories:

National Universities

37. Case Western Reserve Univ. — Cleveland, OH

54. Ohio State University–Columbus, OH

79. Miami University–Oxford, OH

111. University of Dayton — Dayton, OH

135. University of Cincinnati — Cincinnati, OH

146. Ohio University — Athens, OH

188. Kent State University — Kent, OH

194. Bowling Green State University — Bowling Green, OH

214. Ashland University — Ashland, OH

National Liberal Arts Colleges

24. Oberlin College — Oberlin, OH

27. Kenyon College — Gambier, OH

51. Denison University — Granville, OH

62. College of Wooster — Wooster, OH

95. Ohio Wesleyan University — Delaware, OH

149. Hiram College — Hiram, OH

154. Wittenberg University — Springfield, OH

Overall, the top five national universities were: Princeton; Harvard; University of Chicago (tie for third); Yale (tie for third); Columbia (tie for fifth) and Stanford (tie for fifth). Among public universities, the magazine placed U-M as the fourth best, behind University of California-Berekley, University of California-Los Angeles and the University of Virginia.

See the full searchable list here.

The process of college-hunting can lead to information overload, but U.S. News’ rankings are considered an important resource for many. The news organization spends months compiling data from hundreds of schools around the country. While U.S. News & World Report ended its print magazine in 2010, it still publishes online and a print version of its college rankings.

So, how are the rankings compiled?

U.S. News uses five categories of data that are all weighted differently.

• Outcomes (30 percent): Hard student performance data such as retention, graduation rate performance and graduation rate.
• Expert opinion (22.5 percent): More subjective data that includes opinions of presidents, provosts, high school counselors and admissions deans.
• Faculty resources (20 percent): Class size, student-to-faculty ratio, proportion of full-time faculty, proportion of professors with the highest degrees in their field and faculty salary.
• Student excellence (12.5 percent): How incoming students are performing on measures such as ACT/SAT scores, proportion of first-year students in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class and acceptance rate.
• Financial resources (10 percent): How much money the school spends on things such as instruction, research and student services. (Spending on dorms, food and sports don’t count.)
• Alumni giving (5 percent): What percentage of living alumni with a bachelor’s degree have given to their school that year.

U.S. News will release its full methodology Wednesday. But U.S. News Chief Data Strategist Robert Morse told Patch that the publication considers objective factors such as graduation and retention rates.

“College is expensive,” Morse told Patch in an email. “In addition to considering factors like location, cost, course offerings and activities, families should pay close attention to graduation and retention rates.
“These are important indicators of how well a school supports its students academically and financially. The Best Colleges rankings measure academic excellence, and we believe that students and their families should strongly consider academic quality when choosing a college.”

Typically, the prestigious Ivy League schools have a stronghold on the top of U.S. News’s lists. Last year, for instance, Princeton University, Harvard University and Yale University took the first three slots on the national rankings.

That’s all well and good for the best of the best high school students, but what about the rest?

The rankings are broken out by state and by category. Students and parents can also look at the publication’s rankings of best value schools and best public schools and the best schools by discipline such as engineering and business.

They can also drill down and see how specific schools perform across several metrics.

“U.S. News believes that the more information that is available to students, the better,” Morse told Patch. “Rankings, done right, are a useful source of information for students. U.S. News rankings focus specifically on assessing academic quality of schools. If academic quality is a top priority, our rankings are an ideal place to start.

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