By Maxim Tamarov, News Editor
In keeping with the trend established by former university president Richard M. Freeland, Northeastern continued to rise in the US News and World Report list of Best National Universities. It is now number 42.
“We use a variety of factors [to decide the rankings]. The methodology is based on factors such as graduation retention rates, academic reputation, faculty resources, student admissions data, financial resources, graduation performance and alumni giving,” Robert Morse, the chief data strategist of US News, said. “We have a computer model that ranks the data… Northeastern has improved in recent times in many of the ranking factors.”
Other scaling systems are offered in the US News library as well. Northeastern is tied for seventh (with Andrews University and the University of San Francisco) on the US News list for highest percentage of international students with 18 percent.
As Max Kutner pointed out in his September article in Boston Magazine, international student intake can be advantageous for a school’s progress.
“In 2009, NU stopped requiring SAT scores from students attending international high schools,” Kutner said. “By removing a barrier to foreign students, who typically score lower if they take the SATs at all, NU boosted its application numbers without jeopardizing its overall testing average.”
Kutner also pointed out that since they are ineligible for financial aid, international students are forced to pay a full tuition, leaving money in the school’s pockets for use on research and other initiatives with little detriment to the rankings.
Another factor that the US News rankings fail to account for are the engagements of students in their classrooms.
“The rankings don’t cover a lot of what goes on in any institution. They don’t cover classroom learning, or learning outcomes,” Morse said. “We don’t cover underclassman experience and we don’t cover outcomes in the sense of post-graduate success.”
This fact was emphasized in the protests that occurred following the denial of tenure to certain Northeastern professors.
US News is not the only conglomerate that provides a ranking of universities in the US. Forbes magazine’s overall rating of the university places Northeastern at 209, and the Forbes rating for top research universities has the school at 95.
Other rankings, such as the Princeton Review, place Northeastern in a more favorable light.
“NU is no. 1 on our ‘Best Career Services’ list and has often made the top five 5 on this list,” Jeanne Krier, publicist for the Princeton Review, said. “[Northeastern is] also no. 10 on our list, ‘College City Gets High Marks.'”
The Princeton Review’s rankings do not nominate a best-to-worst order for their top colleges, instead focusing on specific attributes of colleges. This approach may appeal to opponents of the US News system, but there are schools that reject all forms of ranking participation. Reed and St. Johns provide two examples.
Despite this, US News has been shown to be effective in influencing incoming student body with a 0.9 percent increase in applicants from every single jump in the US News ranking, according to Navigate Higher Ed. And according to the university website, Northeastern’s application rate rose by 5.2 percent in the past year.
Photo by Mavez Dabas
