USC moves above UCLA in national college rankings

 

USC was ranked 23rd in the 2017 U.S. News & World Report’s list of “Best Colleges” released Tuesday, improving from a tie for 23rd last year.

This places USC a spot above rival UCLA, which is tied for 24th along with Carnegie Mellon University.

This year’s report ranks the schools through data provided by universities, as well as information from a number of sources, such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics and the Council for Aid to Education.

After holding 23rd place in 2014, USC dropped to 25th place the next year. It rose back to 23rd place for the 2016 and 2017 rankings. Conversely, UCLA has dropped from 23rd place in 2014 to 24th place in 2017.

The data collected includes graduation and retention rates, undergraduate academic reputation, student selectivity, financial resources, graduation rate performance and alumni giving rate. The combination of these seven indicators allows the U.S. News & World Report to rank universities, although a statement released by UCLA in LA Weekly on Monday suggested that too much weight is placed on the last factor.

“The U.S. News methodology emphasizes factors that tend to favor private universities, such as endowment size, rate of alumni giving and student–faculty ratio,” the statement said.

According to the U.S. News and World Report, however, alumni giving rates only make up 5 percent of the composite weighted score.

“The host of intangibles that makes up the college experience can’t be measured by a series of data points,” the organization’s website states. “But for families concerned with finding the best academic value for their money, the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings provide an excellent starting point for the search. The formula uses quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality, and it’s based on U.S. News’ researched view of what matters in education.”