One of the most controversial aspects of the U.S. News national university rankings is the use of “undergraduate academic reputation” scores based on the “expert opinion” of the 43.6 percent of college presidents, deans, and provosts who actually return the peer assessment documents to U.S. News. Each response rates a university’s academic reputation on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest score.

The academic reputation category itself counts for 20 percent of the total ranking, a hefty impact indeed. Since 2015, the mean scores for 99 national universities have risen by .14, from 3.67 to 3.81, or almost 4 percent. A rise or fall of .1 or .2 seems to have minimal positive impact on a university’s ranking, while a rise or fall of .3 more likely indicates a real shift in perception and ranking..

The most likely explanation for the minimal impact, in general, of reputation score increases of less than .3 is that changes in the U.S. News rankings methodology that includes measures for “social mobility” and “graduate indebtedness” have, in many cases, overridden or undermined the impact of marginally higher scores for academic reputation.

Only one university, Northeastern, rose by .4–yet the overall ranking for Northeastern fell from 42 to 44 between 2015 and 2023. The reputation score of 11 universities rose by .3: Notre Dame, NYU, Purdue, Boston University, Virginia Tech, Georgia, UMass Amherst, UConn, Utah, UC Santa Cruz, and Florida State. For this group, the ranking for 9 or the 11 universities rose, while the other 2 fell. Only Notre Dame and UConn dropped in the rankings as their reputation scores rose.

Below is a table showing the changes in academic reputation scores and overall rankings for 99 national universities, 2015-2023, sorted by academic reputation ranking in 2023.

Copy of Rsp vs rank 2023.xlsx