A couple weeks ago, Military Media published a piece on how the USNWR ranked colleges for veterans in 2023. Yesterday, they published their rankings for 2024. 

Yale fell 10 spots, from number one to number 11. While I didn’t feel that it deserved its top ranking in 2023, it also doesn’t deserve a lower ranking than it did in 2023. It has, since receiving the top ranking, hired a full time financial aid worker dedicated to student veteran issues, and a full time veterans liaison in the office of Student Life under the Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity. Yale has done more for veterans in the past year than it had in many years before.

In fact, the only thing that got worse about Yale for veterans over the past year was that I left. And while it’s flattering to believe (without any evidence for or against) that it was my departure from Yale that led to it slipping a full 10 full ranks in the past year, there’s no way that my administrative and charismatic, energetic “WAR” translates to 10 ranks, and that someone at USNWR saw that I left, and said “Bonenberger’s gone, Yale falls 10 slots.”

But if that’s what you want to believe, go ahead. Spread it around. I won’t stop you. Who knows? Maybe it’s even true (it isn’t).  

THE BIG STORY

Who's Number One?

US News & World Report's New College Rankings for 2024 Include Some Surprises

Monday September 18, US News and World Report published its annual college rankings for 2024.

While there weren’t any big surprises — big jumps or drops in the rankings are rare — some recognizable names slid, while others crept up a slot or two. This, according to US News and World Report (USNWR), was due to a new ranking methodology.

The biggest single change to USNWR’s methodology from 2023 was that class size went from making up 8% of a college’s ranking to 0% (it was not considered at all). There were several further considerations that were not taken into account in 2024 such as rate of alumni giving. Taken together they made up an 18% change from the previous year.

Anna Ivey, former Dean of Admissions for the University of Chicago Law School, a co-founder of Service to School, and founder of Anna Ivey consulting, a nationally renowned admissions consulting firm, said that the rankings were most important to trustees and alumni. “Year to year, most people don’t keep track of college rankings,” Ivey said in a phone interview the day the rankings were released. “It’s rare that a college will move dramatically in one direction or another, though it has been known to happen.”

The most surprising fluctuations occurred in USNWR’s rankings of the best colleges for Veterans. Last year’s number one, Yale University, slipped 10 slots to 11th. Meanwhile Harvard University, ranked 3rd among National Universities (Yale was ranked 5th this year), was not even in the top 50 universities for Veterans.

This, according to Ivey, highlights the confusing and even arbitrary way that ranking systems can work.

“When ranking systems are transparent, one can at least see how they reflect the attitudes or biases of the editors that compiled them,” said Ivey. “When rankings are opaque, when you don’t know whether the school is measuring housing, or financial aid packages, or other criteria, it can be very difficult to truly understand how a place like US News and World Report arrives at the rankings they do, such as their apparently silly rankings of the best colleges for veterans.”

Clearly, USNWR is making some choices about how to rank colleges based on their appeal to veterans in that list; if it were simply a matter of saying “a college that is good to attend for a non-veteran student will be good to attend for a veteran student,” Harvard would, presumably, be among the top 50 schools for veterans as it is among the top 3 schools for non-veterans. At the same time, it lists the University of Connecticut as the 33rd best school in the nation for veterans — but calculates its in-state tuition as nearly $11,000. In-state tuition for veterans in Connecticut is $0, nothing, it’s free to attend, but it isn’t clear that this is being taken into account. This makes it difficult to truly know whether a college is a “top” destination for veterans or not.

Ivey spoke about the different ways programs and variables were weighted, and how different systems (USNWR, The Wall Street Journal, The Princeton Review) assigned their rankings. She said that while it was worth considering this ostensibly impartial effort to compare colleges to one another, the best strategy for students was to draw up their own lists.

“Figure out what’s important to you, then talk with students at the colleges you want to attend. Organizations like Service to School can help with that, with Veterans,” Ivey said. “Nobody’s going to know your needs better than you, and rankings like US News and World Report are usually just a starting point for conversation and research.”

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TOP READS IN THE MILITARY

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TOP READS FOR VETERANS

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TOP READS AROUND THE WORLD

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HUMOR

“Nation Could Have Sworn Russell Brand Was Already Convicted Sex Offender,” via The Onion, filed under funny because it’s true.