After rising from eighth to seventh last year, Penn has fallen back down to eighth in U.S. News and World Report’s rankings of the nation’s best colleges.
Many factors are taken into account other than the conventional factors of retention and graduation rates as well as the excellence of the faculty. U.S. News takes into account location, campus life and academics while putting together the rankings.
Last year, several methodology changes were made to reduce the weight of input factors, such as high school class standing and graduation rate performance.
The ranking comes after Penn’s 14.4 percent increase in the application pool for the Class of 2018 and subsequent yield of 66 percent, the highest since the Class of 2011.
Penn tied with Duke University this year. The University was also tied with Duke last year, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Princeton is ranked first this year, followed by Harvard and Yale, respectively.
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