U.S. News Answers All Your Rankings Questions [Summary]

Normally, when U.S.-based applicants talk about “the top programs,” especially when they refer to the top X, as in the top 10 or the top 20, they are referring to U.S. News Rankings, the granddaddy of educational rankings. Today we’ll hear from U.S. News Executive Editor, Anne McGrath, and Chief Data Strategist, Robert Morse.

Interview with Anne McGrath and Bob Morse of U.S. News & World Report [Transcript]

*Transcript is not literal and includes paraphrasing.

Linda: I’m so pleased to have on the show Anne McGrath, Executive Editor of U.S. News & World Report, and Robert AKA Bob Morse, Chief Data Strategist at U.S. News & World Report. Anne has been with U.S. News since 1985 and Bob has been with U.S. News since 1976. Both are pioneers in the realm of rankings. Now for all the questions I’ve ever had about rankings but was afraid to ask, and hopefully these are some of yours. I can actually get answers.

Anne and Bob, welcome to Admissions Straight Talk.

Anne: Thank you, good to be here.

Bob: Thank you. We’re looking forward to doing our best effort to answer all your ranking questions. Here’s your chance to get U.S. News to answer them.

Linda: I was just thinking that this is very unusual. Usually representatives of U.S. News are asking the questions, not answering them! And I’m usually the one reading about it. It’s a pleasure to have you here. I’m really looking forward to this and I appreciate your taking the time to join me.

You’ve both been at U.S. News since the beginning of the college rankings, I think it was the 1980s, right? Around 1987 – correct me if I’m wrong.

Bob: Yes. It actually started in ’83 and ’85. They were very short versions in the weekly magazine. 1987 was the first guide book. That’s when we started doing them annually.

Linda: Can you give a little of the backstory – how did this get started? What criteria were there and how did you choose the criteria that you focused on? Has there been an evolution of the criteria over this period in the rankings?

Bob: There has definitely been an evolution of the criteria. At first the rankings were based on reputation alone. College presidents picked their top 10 schools, and the schools that had the most mentions were the ones that were rated. ’87 was the last reputation-only ranking.

Then we realized that for the rankings to become relatively more acceptable in higher education, we needed to bring in statistical data. We met with a lot of higher educators and came up with criteria to measure academic quality which is the basis for the rankings today. We knew that there was a big gap in needing consumer information on how to compare schools to each other, and we thought we could fill this gap by bringing in statistical and reputational data.

And we have evolved the methodology over time from at the beginning we had put more emphasis on inputs and recently we’ve been evolving towards putting more emphasis on outputs, graduation and retention and predicted graduation rate, what’s now account for thirty percent of the methodology and we’ve deemphasized – to at least to some degree – inputs.

Linda: Like test scores, grades, etc?

Bob: Well we never had grades –

Linda: Right.

Bob: Like at one point we had yield, and we dropped yield. And we have reduced the weight of high school class standing ...