Following up on my prior posts (links below): U.S. News has released FAQs on George Washington University’s Data Misreporting:
Claremont McKenna College and Emory University misreported data that were used in the 2012 Best Colleges rankings. Why did U.S. News unrank GW but not Claremont McKenna or Emory?
In all three cases, U.S. News did a statistical simulation of what each school's numerical ranking would have been in their U.S. News ranking category if the corrected data had been used. In the case of George Washington University, the simulation showed that the school's numerical ranking would have been lower as a result of the large change in the school's corrected high school class rank data.
When U.S. News did a simulation of the rankings using corrected data for both Claremont McKenna College and Emory University, the difference using the new data was not large enough to result in a change to their original numerical ranks; they therefore were not unranked.
It is U.S. News's policy that if a school's numerical Best Colleges rank would have been lower by even one or two spots than its originally published rank, it will result in the school being "Unranked" until the next Best Colleges rankings are published. Since GW's numerical rank was determined to be lower than the originally published rank, the school has been unranked.
Prior TaxProf Blog posts:
- Rankings Scandal at George Washington (Nov. 10, 2012)
- U.S. News Strips George Washington of its Ranking Due to Cheating (Nov. 14, 2012)
