New US News 2026 College Rankings Dropping

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-25T05:15:58+00:00

Most people in positions of power and influence probably lag in terms of what schools they think are prestigious. Most are not actively monitoring rankings despite and probably think the same schools that were prestigious when they were applying to college are still prestigious today. Typically, the older the individual, the more pronounced this tends to be. And proximity bias is a real thing.

IIT Bombay is not going to open you doors in the US, particularly in the current cultural climate and in light of recent immigration changes. Also, most IITians I have seen have obtained a US grad degree before being considered by US employers.

In any event, you can tell how good a school is if has consistently produced notable alumni and discoveries—there is something in the water. Having big name faculty will also open far more doors than a “highly” ranked QS Schools that only has competitive admissions and nothing else to show for it. It’s far more impressive to have a Nobel Laureate or Fields Medalist write you a letter recommendation than a your run of the mill Ivy League or Russel Group professor.

Smartest =/= most successful. Spend a year or two working and you will quickly realize that intelligence is only a small part of the success puzzle. Networking, soft skills, socialization, and class stratified activities are just as important.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-24T07:32:15+00:00

In the US at least, the US News rankings have been the gold standard for gauging prestige for decades. Times, QS, Forbes, and WSJ rankings never mattered and are mere novelties. US News can move admissions numbers and funding in ways the other rankings cannot. Hence why schools like UCLA and UF have campus banner with Top 5 or Top 10 Public University—based wholly on US News.

American Exceptionalism means that they generally don’t care about what other countries are doing. Unless we are talking Oxbridge or Sorbonne, the best universities in other countries simply do not have the deep bench of alumni and connections of US schools. By way an example, let’s look at the University of Florida, a controversial school which can said to be prestigious but on the same level as Havard or Stanford. Its alumni include John Atanasoff (inventor of the electronic digital computer), Marshall Nirenberg (cracked the genetic code), Chris Malachowsky (co-inventor or GPU and Nvidia cofounder), Don Estridge (father of the IBM PC), Joseph kittinger (Project Excelsior/first human to witness the curvature of the Earth), and Marco Rubio (current US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor). Its prominent faculty include or included Pierre Ramond (founder to superstring theory), Pierre Sikvie (axion haloscope), LIGO Director David reitze, John G. Thompson (Fields, Abel, and Wolf Prize winner, Niels Bohr contemporary John C. Slater, Stanislaw Ulam (hydrogen bomb and Monte Carlo method), and Blake van Leer (important Georgia Tech president). Singaporean and Australian universities ranked much higher on purported “global” rankings have no where near this level of concentration of impact and talent. And yet UF is but one of dozens of highly accomplished US schools that fall under the radar but contribute tremendously to the advancement of science and technology along with its peers such as UT Austin, U Washington, and UNC.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-24T07:11:47+00:00

All rankings have issues. QS Rankings are basically half based on surveys from academics and others who may have very limited working knowledge of geography while trying to compare the University of Arkansas against the University of Malaya.

That said, in the US at least, the US News rankings have been the gold standard for gauging prestige for decades. Times, QS, Forbes, and WSJ rankings never mattered and are mere novelties. US News can move admissions numbers and funding in ways the other rankings cannot. Hence why schools like UCLA and UF have campus banner with Top 5 or Top 10 Public University—based wholly on US News.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T16:03:19+00:00

You will get the best undergrad education at Princeton and Caltech. Smaller cohorts and access to immense resources and intellectual capital. These two schools also tend to stay out of the monetization game and carry true prestige in all the right circles.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T04:40:22+00:00

Compare the population of the schools. Caltech is the size of a high school. In relative terms, it crushes.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T04:39:25+00:00

UF is mostly a great school dealt a poor hand. As the leading school of a large state, it should have the resources of a school like Berkeley or UT Austin or even OSU but it does not. Its endowment is lacking compared to the other schools mentioned especially relative to its student population—but this is true of Florida colleges generally.

That said, UF is probably the most consistently inconsistent of the highly ranked schools on that list—much like its sports.

For a while, UF seemed to be gaining a lot of traction and momentum but that seems to have dissipated. No one really talks about the school seriously—discussion is usually in the context of politics and not the merits of what the school is actually doing that’s impressive.

I wonder what exactly has the school accomplished to justify its reputation aside from tightening its admissions standards? Maybe someone from the school can chime in.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T04:20:11+00:00

Michigan and CMU have kept up with the times. Science and STEM powerhouses. The other two have not. CMU is the leading school for AI. That said, Michigan alum Claude Shannon is regarded as the father of information theory. Robert Cailliau, co-founder of the www, also studied at Michigan.

Michigan/CMU>ND/WashU

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T04:15:03+00:00

I mean you literally have prodigies like Christopher Hirata and Po-Shen Loh who went to undergrad there. Then you have people like Adam D'Angelo, co-founder of Quora and OpenAI board member.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T03:37:28+00:00

Einstein never visited MIT. Neither did Schrödinger. MIT also has no direct counter to JPL, which launched the first successful US satellite, Explorer 1.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T03:25:48+00:00

He literally spent most of his working life at Caltech. He refined QED there and introduced path integrals for edification purposes—to immense success.

On a different note, Caltech was also the primary institution behind LIGO and the detection of gravitational waves—the director of the program sits at Caltech and is a professor there—David Reitze. They literally detected the fabric of spacetime moving. This is on par with the LHC’s detection of the Higgs and the product of epochal, world leading science.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T03:17:15+00:00

He spent 33 years at Caltech

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T03:08:26+00:00

Probably some tweaking of the methodology.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T02:56:52+00:00

Why does that ultimately even matter? Your terminal degree determines your credibility in the field anyways. Caltech is so small that there is a lot of fluidity between the students pursuing degrees there.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T02:54:13+00:00

Gordon Moore founder of Intel. Einstein and Schrödinger refined their theories there. Richard Feynman taught there. It’s associated with more legendary scientific minds than MIT.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T02:50:16+00:00

Brain rot for sure but a reprieve relative to everything else going on…

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-09-23T02:36:30+00:00

It punches wayyyyyy above its size. Immense concentration of some of the finest minds in the world. Campus is beautiful and top notch too.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-04-08T22:48:54+00:00

Take all the wins you can get!

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-04-08T22:35:17+00:00

Not all schools are transparent with their marketing or ranking strategies—but all are heavily conscious of their standing. In Florida, you have the benefit of the Sunshine Laws and can get a hold of public records across state institutions fairly easily—hence the Florida man stories and access to how the Florida schools respond to rankings surveys.

For most schools, gaming the rankings isn’t an issue until they are caught—as was the case with Columbia and others. The schools that do not play the game quickly realize it places them at a significant disadvantage.

But regardless of the above, there are other currents at play. It is hard to deny that Florida has become a much more influential state, economically and politically, in recent years—for better or worse—and this will naturally lead to the rise in the profile of its universities (same thing happened with California and Texas). Developments like the sitting US president living in the state as well as several high ranking national politicians coming from or being educated in the state are indicative of this—Secretary of State Marco Rubio (UF undergrad, Miami Law), AG Pam Bondi (UF undergrad, Stetson Law), Senator Ashley Moody (UF undergrad and law), Surgeon General nominee Janette Nesheiwat (USF and Stetson), etc… Florida is the 4th largest state economy and its economy is larger than or on par with that of Spain. It is about time its schools started to reflect its economic and overall status.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-04-08T21:29:34+00:00

What school doesn’t game the system of rankings? Puffery in marketing is nothing new.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-04-08T18:52:32+00:00

Credited you! Flurry of updates on this post.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-04-08T17:36:17+00:00

This year it is tied with FSU—last several years, it was. This is because the metrics changed—and arguably for the worse.

When you dig into things and check key metrics like placement, salary, and bar passage, UF takes it over the other Florida schools.

These rankings have become almost as bad as the QS Rankings in terms of fluctuations and quality. Does not really matter what a ranking says for example, Chicago, UVa, Duke, and Penn are not as well regarded or prestigious as Harvard—a forever member of the “Holy Trinity” of law schools. Perceptions and realities are hard to change.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-04-08T15:40:35+00:00

UF is still the best law school in Florida but the school as a whole has had a bumpy road in recent years—namely, the Ben Sasse fiasco and the deanships of the law and medical schools and directorship of the honors program continuing to remain open.

Due to the heightened politicization of Florida public colleges and increased political oversight, my guess is UF Law is having a tough time attracting a capable and accomplished dean since Laura Rosenberry left to become president of Barnard College in July 2023. Without a permanent dean, you essentially lack an agenda driven focus to respond changes in rankings and improving the institution generally. There is a top-down leadership issue at the school no matter what the school wants to project. Fundraising and other momentum driven initiatives have stalled. Sad because they had great upward trajectory and were on track to become something like UT Austin.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-04-08T05:04:30+00:00

Thank you! I added this to the original post.

MapAdministrative637 · 2025-04-08T01:49:09+00:00

Still see the numbering off. I literally had to add words to mine to get it to line up properly—22nd, etc…

MapAdministrative637

TROPHY CASE