re: USN&WR College Rankings by Conference

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The US News rankings are influential. Studies have found they impact both where students apply and where they actually attend. That strong influence may explain why colleges aren't always honest when they tell US News about themselves.

colleges aren't always honest when they tell the rankings about themselves

Since 2012, five colleges admitted to falsifying data they submitted to US News. These weren't one-off typos or brief ethical lapses. They were systemic campaigns of misinformation that lasted for years, mostly located at colleges that are generally well-known but aren't quite Ivy League caliber — the kind of place where rankings really matter.

Bucknell University (no. 32 on the US News list of national liberal arts colleges) admitted to submitting six years' worth of inflated SAT scores. For eight years, Claremont McKenna College (no. 9) inflated students' class rank and claimed the college rejected a higher proportion of applicants than it actually did. Emory University (no. 20 on the list of national universities) had been inflating the qualifications of its freshman class since at least 2000. George Washington University (no. 51) did the same for at least a decade.

"We have no reason to believe that other schools have misreported data," US News said in a blog post published after four of those instances were uncovered. College admissions officers themselves suspect the dishonesty is more widespread: 91 percent said in a survey conducted by Gallup and Inside Higher Ed that other colleges (although not their own, of course) were probably lying too.

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