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Pitt drops for 4th year in a row in US News rankings

CrazyPaco

CrazyPaco

Athletic Director
Jul 5, 2001
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Drops to #70 in the National university rankings, sits at #32 public university. 14th of 18 ACC schools.

This is down from #57 national & 18th public in 2020.

Pitt is ranked behind by Ohio State, Maryland, Rutgers, Purdue, Georgia, Texas A&M, FSU, Minnesota, NC State, UMass, Michigan St, Miami, and Penn State.

Part of these changes are due to continual changes in US New's methodology, but it is not a good trend, regardless, and it absolutely impacts Pitt's ability to recruit students.

1. Princeton
4. Standford
6. Duke
17. Cal
18. Notre Dame
21. Carnegie Mellon
24. Virginia
25. North Carolina
33. Georgia Tech
37. Boston College
46. Wake Forest
51. Virginia Tech
54. Florida State
58. NC State
58. Villanova
63. Miami (7 schools tied for #63; Pitt is one spot below this)
63. Penn State
70. Pitt
70. UConn
70. Rensselaer Polytechnic
73. Syracuse
80. Clemson
91. SMU
98. Temple
165. Duquesne
179. Louisville
209. Chatham
214. Robert Morris
220 West Chester
220 WVU

Regional Colleges North:
#13 Pitt-Johnstown
#20 Pitt-Bradford

Liberal Arts Colleges National
#187-204 PItt-Greensburg
 
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Here is what is out-of-whack for Pitt and this ranking...and always has been.

A list of the top 25 universities (which have undergrad components) in terms of research expenditures with their corresponding US News undergrad rankings in (_):

1. Johns Hopkins (6)
2. Penn (10)
3. Michigan (21)
4. Washington (46)
5. UCLA (15)
6 UCSD (29)
7. Wisconsin (39)
8. Duke (6)
9. Stanford (4)
10. Ohio State (41)
11. UNC (27)
12. Harvard (3)
13. Cornell (11)
14. NYU (30)
15. Pitt (70)
16. Georgia Tech (33)
17. Columbia (13)
18. Maryland (44)
19. Minnesota (54)
20. Yale (5)
21. Texas A&M (51)
22. Vanderbilt (18)
23. Florida (30)
24. Washington U St. Louis (21)
25. USC (27)

Pitt is the only top 25 research university outside the top 54 of US News. By far the largest disparity. You see the same thing with med school rankings. By its research and graduate characteristics, Pitt should be ranked in US News between 40-50. No matter what you think about it, US News is huge for perception and student/parent decision making. Pitt is definitely doing something wrong and has been for a long time. This slide is a trend that Gabel needs to address.
 
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The good news:
Nursing rose from 10th to #4.

More bad news:
Engineering dropped from #53 to #57
Economics dropped from #41 to #43

More individual program rankings to come.
 
How about Robert Morris knocking on the door of the Top 200...they have been slow and steady climbing the rankings..from a JUCO to a Regional school to a National school. I think when they first switched to the National category they were like 350+...
 
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CrazyPaco said:
The good news:
Nursing rose from 10th to #4.

More bad news:
Engineering dropped from #53 to #57
Economics dropped from #41 to #43

More individual program rankings to come.
Click to expand...
In terms of rankings, these university academic rankings sit somewhere between college football rankings and national high school cheerleader rankings. Sure, a higher ranking is better....... but come on. What a bunch of bullshit.

The individual student is what matters.
 
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CrazyPaco said:
Here is what is out-of-whack for Pitt and this ranking...and always has been.

A list of the top 25 universities (which have undergrad components) in terms of research expenditures with their corresponding US News undergrad rankings in (_):

1. Johns Hopkins (6)
2. Penn (10)
3. Michigan (21)
4. Washington (46)
5. UCLA (15)
6 UCSD (29)
7. Wisconsin (39)
8. Duke (6)
9. Stanford (4)
10. Ohio State (41)
11. UNC (27)
12. Harvard (3)
13. Cornell (11)
14. NYU (30)
15. Pitt (70)
16. Georgia Tech (33)
17. Columbia (13)
18. Maryland (44)
19. Minnesota (54)
20. Yale (5)
21. Texas A&M (51)
22. Vanderbilt (18)
23. Florida (30)
24. Washington U St. Louis (21)
25. USC (27)

Pitt is the only top 25 research university outside the top 54 of US News. By far the largest disparity. You see the same thing with med school rankings. By its research and graduate characteristics, Pitt should be ranked in US News between 40-50. No matter what you think about it, US News is huge for perception and student/parent decision making. Pitt is definitely doing something wrong and has been for a long time. This slide is a trend that Gabel needs to address.
Click to expand...
In your view....what are the top 1 or 2 things Gabel needs to make happen to move Pitt closer to where it was 24 years ago?
 
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Conemaugh said:
In terms of rankings, these university academic rankings sit somewhere between college football rankings and national high school cheerleader rankings. Sure, a higher ranking is better....... but come on. What a bunch of bullshit.

The individual student is what matters.
Click to expand...

upj87 said:
Click to expand...

Doesn't really matter how legit the methodology is, which has been debated ad nauseam. US News rankings have a huge impact on student recruiting. In US academia, there is no ranking more influential. That is just the reality of undergrad higher education in the United States. Reality doesn't change by sticking fingers in one's ears.
 
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pittchagg said:
Convince the legislature to fund Pitt to the degree that it did 24 years ago. That is the single biggest thing that would help move Pitt up the rankings.
Click to expand...

Commonwealth funding to Pitt in FY 2000 was $312,574,900 in 2024 CPI-adjusted dollars representing 16.2% of Pitt's overall budget.

For 2024-25, Pitt will receive $151,500,000 in general funding which represents about 5% of Pitt's overall operating budget.
 
CrazyPaco said:
Doesn't really matter how legit the methodology is, which has been debated ad nauseam. US News rankings have a huge impact on student recruiting. In US academia, there is n ranking more influential. That is just the reality of undergrad higher education in the United States. Reality doesn't change by sticking fingers in one's ears.
Click to expand...
So what is Pitt to do? Increase application rejections to make themselves look better? Game they methodology as other schools have done in the past? What is it? I kind of missed where improved academics in Oakland comes into play here as far as improving perception... US News is now a TMZ-like ranking rag that losses more and more credibility every year. Much like Time and Newsweek used to be esteemed news weekly's and are basically forgotten now US News now relies on ranking groupies such as yourself to perpetuate their existence.

U.S. News ranks Northeastern, which is now an extremely popular destination, as No. 40 in the coveted national university category. It is tied with such institutions as Tulane and College of William and Mary. A couple of decades ago it was ranked No. 162 and it was rare for anyone outside of Boston to have heard of it....
 
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CrazyPaco said:
Commonwealth funding to Pitt in FY 2000 was $312,574,900 in 2024 CPI-adjusted dollars representing 16.2% of Pitt's overall budget.

For 2024-25, Pitt will receive $151,500,000 in general funding which represents about 5% of Pitt's overall operating budget.
Click to expand...
Could PITT go private?
 
vantheman1976 said:
In your view....what are the top 1 or 2 things Gabel needs to make happen to move Pitt closer to where it was 24 years ago?
Click to expand...

I just noticed in my original posted, I said 2000 for the prior rankings, I meant to say 2020 and that is now fixed.

24 years ago, in the US News rankings that came out in calendar year 2000 (2001 US News rankings), Pitt was grouped in the national rankings from #52 to #116. Individual rankings were not broken down above #50. Pitt's public college ranking was #38, which is lower than this year's #32, so Pitt is actually rated higher than it was in the 2001 US News rankings. But the second half of the 2000s were a period where Pitt was marching up the rankings and was consistently ranked between 56-59 and in the top 25 of publics. The methodology was also pretty different, with more emphasis on admissions statistics. Now, admissions statistics, which Pitt has excellent numbers in, is very deemphasized in comparison, and this certainly has accounted for some of the recent drop. Pitt needs to focus on student outcomes, like graduation rates, where it has greatly improved but also has historically lagged.
 
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upj87 said:
So what is Pitt to do? Increase application rejections to make themselves look better? Game they methodology as other schools have done in the past? What is it? I kind of missed where improved academics in Oakland comes into play here as far as improving perception... US News is now a TMZ-like ranking rag that losses more and more credibility every year. Much like Time and Newsweek used to be esteemed news weekly's and are basically forgotten now US News now relies on ranking groupies such as yourself to perpetuate their existence.

U.S. News ranks Northeastern, which is now an extremely popular destination, as No. 40 in the coveted national university category. It is tied with such institutions as Tulane and College of William and Mary. A couple of decades ago it was ranked No. 162 and it was rare for anyone outside of Boston to have heard of it....
Click to expand...

Years ago, Northeastern started to game the rankings, cracked the top 50, and is now permanently fixture here and has continued to move up in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Its student recruitment and reputation has sky rocketed as a result. All you need to do is read college admissions message boards to see how much these rankings impact student and parent thinking. Outside of how much financial aid one receives, it is a primary driver of decision making.

As mentioned above, admissions statistics are greatly deemphasized now. Acceptance rates are completely eliminated from US News' methodology; only standardized test scores are still included. So it doesn't matter how selective Pitt is; what matters is have admitted students matriculate to Pitt that are most likely to be successful. Pitt needs to focus on 6-year graduation rates, overall graduation rates (16% of the score), grad performance for Pell grant recipients (which is now a combined 11% of the score), improving its peer assessment score (which is still 20% of the rank). Right there is about half the score. Student debt is another 5%, and that is directly related to Commonwealth funding but Pitt has to raise more money for scholarship endowments across the board which generally impacts not only debt, but all of the graduation outcome measures above.

Better undergrad advising would also help: https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/news/provost-colleagues
As would building up programs to keep in touch with students and their academic and financial situations, over the summer breaks, and this was emphasized during COVID but should become standard or expanded.
 
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upj87 said:
So what is Pitt to do? Increase application rejections to make themselves look better? Game they methodology as other schools have done in the past? What is it? I kind of missed where improved academics in Oakland comes into play here as far as improving perception... US News is now a TMZ-like ranking rag that losses more and more credibility every year. Much like Time and Newsweek used to be esteemed news weekly's and are basically forgotten now US News now relies on ranking groupies such as yourself to perpetuate their existence.

U.S. News ranks Northeastern, which is now an extremely popular destination, as No. 40 in the coveted national university category. It is tied with such institutions as Tulane and College of William and Mary. A couple of decades ago it was ranked No. 162 and it was rare for anyone outside of Boston to have heard of it....
Click to expand...
Hire Jamie Dixon to figure out how to game the RPI system.
 
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jivecat said:
Could PITT go private?
Click to expand...

Privates, outside of the elite ones, are actually at more of a disadvantage in the current US News rankings because of the emphasis on Pell grant outcomes. But primarily, how does Pitt replace the annual $151.5 million in Commonwealth funding that 100% goes to directly reduce tuition costs for in-state students? You'd need an additional $3 billion endowment just to replace that annual subsidy. It isn't a realistic option because there really is no practical advantage to it. Going fully private would likely bring an end to the regional campuses unless those 3 schools retained state-related status while the main campus did not.

In any case, Pitt is a hybrid state-related university, but operationally, it is private. It is privately governed (2/3rds of its board members are privately selected), its officers, including the chancellor, are selected by that privately controlled board, it assets (outside of a few buildings constructed in the 60s) are all in the hands of the university not the state, it sets its own budget and tuition rates, and its employees are not employees of the state. This is also why it is outside the requirements of state open record laws, which is one of the few advantages it enjoys being in this hybrid arrangement. It is listed as "public" university because the Carnegie Classifications have only 2 buckets, and it falls into the "public" one because in-state tuition is publicly subsidized.
 
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CrazyPaco said:
Privates are actually at more of a disadvantage in the current US News rankings because of the emphasis on Pell grant outcomes. But primarily, how does Pitt replace the annual $151.5 million in Commonwealth funding that 100% goes to directly reduce tuition costs for in-state students? You'd need an additional $3 billion endowment just to replace that annual subsidy. It isn't a realistic option because there really is no practical advantage to it. Going fully private would likely bring an end to the regional campuses unless those 3 schools retained state-related status while the main campus did not.

In any case, Pitt is a hybrid state-related university, but operationally, it is private. It is privately governed (2/3rds of its board members are privately selected), its officers, including the chancellor, are selected by that privately controlled board, it assets (outside of a few buildings constructed in the 60s) are all in the hands of the university not the state, it sets its own budget and tuition rates, and its employees are not employees of the state. This is also why it is outside the requirements of state open record laws, which is one of the few advantages it enjoys being in this hybrid arrangement. It is listed as "public" university because the Carnegie Classifications have only 2 buckets, and it falls into the "public" one because in-state tuition is publicly subsidized.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the explanation. Seems like there would be no advantage to go private.
 
CrazyPaco said:
Privates are actually at more of a disadvantage in the current US News rankings because of the emphasis on Pell grant outcomes. But primarily, how does Pitt replace the annual $151.5 million in Commonwealth funding that 100% goes to directly reduce tuition costs for in-state students? You'd need an additional $3 billion endowment just to replace that annual subsidy. It isn't a realistic option because there really is no practical advantage to it. Going fully private would likely bring an end to the regional campuses unless those 3 schools retained state-related status while the main campus did not.

In any case, Pitt is a hybrid state-related university, but operationally, it is private. It is privately governed (2/3rds of its board members are privately selected), its officers, including the chancellor, are selected by that privately controlled board, it assets (outside of a few buildings constructed in the 60s) are all in the hands of the university not the state, it sets its own budget and tuition rates, and its employees are not employees of the state. This is also why it is outside the requirements of state open record laws, which is one of the few advantages it enjoys being in this hybrid arrangement. It is listed as "public" university because the Carnegie Classifications have only 2 buckets, and it falls into the "public" one because in-state tuition is publicly subsidized.
Click to expand...
It appears that the US News formula rewards one type of admissions candidate above all others: the most effective rankings booster is a child of extremely wealthy parents who will not need to take out any student loan debt, but who will also pay full out of state tuition (i.e., no merit scholarship money needs to be extended. Their academic credentials aren’t really as important as their willingness to pay full freight, and their lack of need to take out student loans.

Then, the other profile is that you want to make sure that Pell recipients essentially have a full ride, and you do whatever is necessary to ensure that those students graduate at as close to 100% as it gets.

If you are going to be a public school in the rankings universe that seeks to serve a student body that’s anything resembling what a public school typically educates (many in-state students from families that aren’t extremely wealthy), then you are absolutely f*cked if your public school is expensive. Unfortunately, Pitt is the most or second most expensive public school in the United States, and as these rankings continue to give affordability and affordability-adjacent factors more and more weight, schools like Pitt will continue to be hurt. The only way to change that while retaining the public model is to either (a) accept way more out of state students, or (b) actually have the legislature take funding higher education seriously, instead of the joke that it’s been for the past twenty years.
 
vantheman1976 said:
In your view....what are the top 1 or 2 things Gabel needs to make happen to move Pitt closer to where it was 24 years ago?
Click to expand...
Left lane, hammer down! Is it just a coincidence we were ranked higher when Fat Finger Todd was on campus? I think not!
 
pittchagg said:
It appears that the US News formula rewards one type of admissions candidate above all others: the most effective rankings booster is a child of extremely wealthy parents who will not need to take out any student loan debt, but who will also pay full out of state tuition (i.e., no merit scholarship money needs to be extended. Their academic credentials aren’t really as important as their willingness to pay full freight, and their lack of need to take out student loans.

Then, the other profile is that you want to make sure that Pell recipients essentially have a full ride, and you do whatever is necessary to ensure that those students graduate at as close to 100% as it gets.

If you are going to be a public school in the rankings universe that seeks to serve a student body that’s anything resembling what a public school typically educates (many in-state students from families that aren’t extremely wealthy), then you are absolutely f*cked if your public school is expensive. Unfortunately, Pitt is the most or second most expensive public school in the United States, and as these rankings continue to give affordability and affordability-adjacent factors more and more weight, schools like Pitt will continue to be hurt. The only way to change that while retaining the public model is to either (a) accept way more out of state students, or (b) actually have the legislature take funding higher education seriously, instead of the joke that it’s been for the past twenty years.
Click to expand...

Yes, Pitt, PSU, and Temple are all at a huge disadvantage because of the expense of the costs of tuition. All three are at the top of the list for most expensive publics.

No one is really going to make an impactful change for Commonwealth funding. Keeping the status quo is about all they can hope for. Pitt has to raise money for endowed undergraduate scholarships and financial aid programs. I expect that to be a major emphasis of the forthcoming and long awaited capital campaign. Even outside these rankings, student debt is a high profile and legitimate concern. It would be wise to also look at at how providing more student academic support services and advising would impact these outcomes.
 
CrazyPaco said:
Yes, Pitt, PSU, and Temple are all at a huge disadvantage because of the expense of the costs of tuition. All three are at the top of the list for most expensive publics.

No one is really going to make an impactful change for Commonwealth funding. Keeping the status quo is about all they can hope for. Pitt has to raise money for endowed undergraduate scholarships. I expect that to be a major emphasis of the forthcoming and long awaited capital campaign. It would be good to look at at providing more student academic support services and advising as well.
Click to expand...
I was encouraged by Gabel’s twofold Pell-related rollout pretty much as soon as she got here: the “Finish Line” grant program that rolled out this fall to help students who are one or two semesters from graduating get across the finish line if they’re having financial issues, and having the expansion of the Pitt Success Pell program as a key point on the new strategic plan. Given that Pell factors are now 11% of the ranking formula (as opposed to admissions statistics, which are 5%), they’re doing the right things to be a leader in that area. Pitt probably can’t guarantee $0 tuition for families who make $80,000 or less like Harvard does, but this is good work.

Pitt’s strategic plan is focusing on the right things both for rankings growth and because I think they’re good things to do: (1) make it more affordable, especially for kids from lower income families; (2) retain and eventually graduate the students that you do bring here; and (3) improve student well-being and the student experience, which also helps with retention.
 
pittchagg said:
I was encouraged by Gabel’s twofold Pell-related rollout pretty much as soon as she got here: the “Finish Line” grant program that rolled out this fall to help students who are one or two semesters from graduating get across the finish line if they’re having financial issues, and having the expansion of the Pitt Success Pell program as a key point on the new strategic plan. Given that Pell factors are now 11% of the ranking formula (as opposed to admissions statistics, which are 5%), they’re doing the right things to be a leader in that area. Pitt probably can’t guarantee $0 tuition for families who make $80,000 or less like Harvard does, but this is good work.

Pitt’s strategic plan is focusing on the right things both for rankings growth and because I think they’re good things to do: (1) make it more affordable, especially for kids from lower income families; (2) retain and eventually graduate the students that you do bring here; and (3) improve student well-being and the student experience, which also helps with retention.
Click to expand...
Yep, and I think that focus is intentional. Not only because of the rankings, but the current popular emphasis on these things, which is why US News has put them into its rankings in the first place.

There also seems to be an emphasis on improving Pitt's public narrative, which has long been deficient.

There is very little separating #50 through #80, so small improvements can make big impacts. Pitt's goal should be placing in the top 50. There is zero reason it shouldn't be between 40-50.
 
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pittchagg said:
I was encouraged by Gabel’s twofold Pell-related rollout pretty much as soon as she got here: the “Finish Line” grant program that rolled out this fall to help students who are one or two semesters from graduating get across the finish line if they’re having financial issues, and having the expansion of the Pitt Success Pell program as a key point on the new strategic plan. Given that Pell factors are now 11% of the ranking formula (as opposed to admissions statistics, which are 5%), they’re doing the right things to be a leader in that area. Pitt probably can’t guarantee $0 tuition for families who make $80,000 or less like Harvard does, but this is good work.

Pitt’s strategic plan is focusing on the right things both for rankings growth and because I think they’re good things to do: (1) make it more affordable, especially for kids from lower income families; (2) retain and eventually graduate the students that you do bring here; and (3) improve student well-being and the student experience, which also helps with retention.
Click to expand...
Perhaps I am making a big assumption but residents of the Commonwealth have many more University choices then the "average" state. PENN, Carnegie Mellon, Drexel, Villanova, Dickinson, Gettysburg, Bucknell, Scranton, etc,. PITT needs to compete against these outstanding institutions for students. Outside of California, NY, and maybe Texas.....which state has better Universities?
 
jivecat said:
Perhaps I am making a big assumption but residents of the Commonwealth have many more University choices then the "average" state. PENN, Carnegie Mellon, Drexel, Villanova, Dickinson, Gettysburg, Bucknell, Scranton, etc,. PITT needs to compete against these outstanding institutions for students. Outside of California, NY, and maybe Texas.....which state has better Universities?
Click to expand...
I think you could make a compelling argument for North Carolina and Virginia. Not just the ACC schools, but North Carolina and Virginia also have a large collection of good reputation smaller publics and privates.
 
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CrazyPaco said:
Yep, and I think that focus is intentional. Not only because of the rankings, but the current popular emphasis on these things, which is why US News has put them into its rankings in the first place.

There also seems to be an emphasis on improving Pitt's public narrative, which has long been deficient.

There is very little separating #50 through #80, so small improvements can make big impacts. Pitt's goal should be placing in the top 50. There is zero reason it shouldn't be between 40-50.
Click to expand...
Yep. It was a wise move when Gallagher saw where the winds were headed and implemented the program in the first place, and the fact is that the program didn’t even start bearing fruit in terms of students who got the grant for their entire university careers until a year or two ago.

It’s something that will continue to pay dividends, and whittling away at the margins of kids who don’t graduate for financial reasons, or who come up a few credits short because they can’t afford a ninth semester to graduate in 4.5 years instead of four, will continue to have an outsized boost on the rankings - in addition, again, to just being the right thing to do for students who have already invested several years into a Pitt education.
 
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pittchagg said:
I think you could make a compelling argument for North Carolina and Virginia. Not just the ACC schools, but North Carolina and Virginia also have a large collection of good reputation smaller publics and privates.
Click to expand...

PA's public system is terrible. You get what you pay for.

There are a glut of colleges and universities in PA though, which don't match the realities of its demographic trends. Pitt has to be competitive recruiting out-of-state.
 
CrazyPaco said:
PA's public system is terrible. You get what you pay for.

There are a glut of colleges and universities in PA though, which don't match the realities of its demographic trends. Pitt has to be competitive recruiting out-of-state.
Click to expand...
I have a theory that Penn State worked to monetize the "branch campus" model and actually hurt the state funded college system. This crushed the IUPs, Shippensburg, East Stroudsburg, Kutztown, etc, state schools.
 
jivecat said:
I have a theory that Penn State worked to monetize the "branch campus" model and actually hurt the state funded college system. This crushed the IUPs, Shippensburg, East Stroudsburg, Kutztown, etc, state schools.
Click to expand...

It absolutely hurt the state system. In the late 80s/early 90s when PSU's 19 branches were still mostly all 2-year schools, the state-system schools all pleaded with the legislature not to allow their plan to move them all to 4-year schools to go forward. It has had a massive negative effect on the state-system, as most of the PSU branches overlap in territory. But the sad part is, PSU's branches are absolute garbage outside one or two of them; the state-system schools are of much better quality and are actually self-contained universities with actual legitimate campuses. Such is the power of branding and perception, not to mention having outsized influence on the state legislature.
 
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pittchagg said:
I was encouraged by Gabel’s twofold Pell-related rollout pretty much as soon as she got here: the “Finish Line” grant program that rolled out this fall to help students who are one or two semesters from graduating get across the finish line if they’re having financial issues, and having the expansion of the Pitt Success Pell program as a key point on the new strategic plan. Given that Pell factors are now 11% of the ranking formula (as opposed to admissions statistics, which are 5%), they’re doing the right things to be a leader in that area. Pitt probably can’t guarantee $0 tuition for families who make $80,000 or less like Harvard does, but this is good work.

Pitt’s strategic plan is focusing on the right things both for rankings growth and because I think they’re good things to do: (1) make it more affordable, especially for kids from lower income families; (2) retain and eventually graduate the students that you do bring here; and (3) improve student well-being and the student experience, which also helps with retention.
Click to expand...
4) NIL for really smart students
 
CrazyPaco said:
I just noticed in my original posted, I said 2000 for the prior rankings, I meant to say 2020 and that is now fixed.

24 years ago, in the US News rankings that came out in calendar year 2000 (2001 US News rankings), Pitt was grouped in the national rankings from #52 to #116. Individual rankings were not broken down above #50. Pitt's public college ranking was #38, which is lower than this year's #32, so Pitt is actually rated higher than it was in the 2001 US News rankings. But the second half of the 2000s were a period where Pitt was marching up the rankings and was consistently ranked between 56-59 and in the top 25 of publics. The methodology was also pretty different, with more emphasis on admissions statistics. Now, admissions statistics, which Pitt has excellent numbers in, is very deemphasized in comparison, and this certainly has accounted for some of the recent drop. Pitt needs to focus on student outcomes, like graduation rates, where it has greatly improved but also has historically lagged.
Click to expand...
Interestingly as you say....."Individual rankings were not broken down above #50" 24 years ago when Pitt was in the 52 - 116 group. US News hasn't done much to refine things 24 years later. Here are the rankings now above #50. For schools rated 51 to 70 (Pitt's current ranking).....

  • 3 schools tied at 51
  • 4 schools tied at 54
  • 5 schools tied at 58
  • 7 schools tied at 63
  • 3 schools tied at 70 (one of which is Pitt)
So there we have it....23 schools bunched into 5 rankings. If we can leapfrog the 7 schools grouped at 63....we come in at 58 with 5 other schools....and maybe none of us are wringing our hands about Pitt's rating. But I get it.....just like NIL in sports....the US News rankings are what we have to deal with. Incidentally....that group of 7 includes Penn State, Michigan State, Tulane, and Miami....good schools but I'll keep my degree from Pitt....thank you very much! One last thing....I did have one WTF moment at looking at these rankings....University of Georgia at 46 🤣. That's all.
 
pittchagg said:
I think you could make a compelling argument for North Carolina and Virginia. Not just the ACC schools, but North Carolina and Virginia also have a large collection of good reputation smaller publics and privates.
Click to expand...
I think PA is way stronger. The poster listed:
PENN,
Carnegie Mellon
Drexel
Villanova
Dickinson
Gettysburg
Bucknell
Scranton (Scranton, really?)

But also:
Swarthmore
Lehigh
Lafayette
Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sisters colleges (think Wellsley, Vassar, Smith etc..)
Even Allegheny and W&J
 
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