Cornell’s rank stays.

According to the new US News rankings, Cornell stays steady at 15, in a tie with (cough) Brown. I think Oliver jinxed us. Well, what can you do?

Northwestern took 12, and Johns Hopkins and Washington University in St. Louis tied for 13. We already mentioned the qualifications on which this seemingly arbitrary decision is based, but in case you missed it, here it is again (also, US News made a few changes to their methodology):

Peer Assessment: 22.5% (down from 25%)
(Peer) Assessment by college provosts, presidents, and deans (15%)
Assessment by high school guidance counselors (7.5%)

Faculty Resources: 20%

Student Selectivity: 15%

Graduation and Freshman retention: 20%
6-year graduation rate: 80%
Freshmen retention rate: 20%

Financial Resources: 10%

Graduation rate performance: 7.5% (up from 5%)

Alumni Giving Rate: 5%

Peer assessment, nearly a fourth of the score, sounds quite subjective. US News is now adding high school guidance counselors to their methodology–I don’t know about everyone else’s high school counselor, but in my experience, they weren’t very helpful in the college-picking or application process. I don’t know how objective “peer assessment” can be, but I know that they certainly made it less objective by adding high school counselors to the mix (can you just see them rating schools based on whether or not their favorite students were admitted, whether or not the high school’s star athlete was recruited, etc. etc.). As far as the other categories, the SAT scores of Cornell’s 2014 class improved, and the acceptance rate went down… but that happened at pretty much every other school, too. Our financial resources seem to be pinched–but again, that’s probably happening at most other schools right now, too. Who knows what actually happens at the table at which a bunch of big wigs rank national schools? At least we didn’t lose any ground (which has been the trend until this year).