Penn was ranked No. 7 in the 2022-2023 U.S. News & World Report ranking of American universities, moving up one spot from last year.
The Wharton School and the School of Nursing once again earned top rankings in the report’s lists of undergraduate business schools and nursing programs respectively. The School of Engineering ranked No. 22, in a five-way tie with Penn State University, the University of California, San Diego, the University of Maryland, and the University of Washington.
Princeton University topped the rankings for the eleventh year in a row. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked second, while Harvard University, Stanford University, and Yale University all tied for third place. The University of Chicago ranked No. 6.
Penn came in No. 18 in the Best Value Schools list, which evaluates schools based on a combination of academic program quality and average cost, taking financial aid into account. Harvard earned the top spot on this list this year.
In the list of the nation's best universities overall, all of the members of the Ivy League ranked within the top 20. Dartmouth College was ranked No. 12, Brown University was ranked No. 13, and Cornell University was ranked No. 17. Columbia University was ranked the lowest of the eight Ivy League schools at No. 18 — tied with the University of Notre Dame.
Columbia’s comparatively low ranking comes after a Columbia mathematics professor published an analysis in February claiming the university misrepresented data in its submission to the 2021 Best Colleges ranking list, the Columbia Spectator reported.
The professor alleged in the analysis, posted on a Columbia-hosted website, that the university misrepresented undergraduate course sizes, graduation outcomes, student-to-faculty ratio, and various other pieces of data.
Columbia, which had been ranked No. 2 in the 2021-2022 rankings, was then moved to an “unranked” status in July. This year, Columbia did not submit institutional data to U.S. News, leaving the ranking to be based on publicly available data.
Columbia confirmed the allegations leveled against it on Friday, saying that the office had used “outdated and/or incorrect methodologies” when collecting data about average class sizes and the amount of faculty with terminal degrees, such as doctorates.
U.S. News reports that it evaluates schools based on several different factors, including graduation rates, academic reputation, and financial resources.
The rankings have been subject to increased scrutiny in recent years as many question their validity and weight. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona declared last month that systems of ranking colleges based on prestige are“a joke.”
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