Why U.S. News Whacked NYU Stern

‘U.S. NEWS WILL NOT RECALCULATE NYU’S RANKINGS BECAUSE OF NON-REPORTING’

With print deadlines passed and so many numbers to crunch, U.S. News took a hard line on the mistake. “U.S. News will not recalculate NYU’s rankings – or any other school’s rankings – because of non-reporting,” declares Robert Morse, the magazine’s long-time rankings guru, in explaining why NYU had fallen so far.

“U.S. News depends on schools to provide accurate and complete data in response to our statistical surveys, and re-ranking a school due to an oversight on its end would set a precedent U.S. News does not support,” he tells Poets&Quants. “After the rankings were finalized, Stern recognized its error and provided U.S. News with the omitted data points. We have included the omitted data on Stern’s profile page on usnews.com so that students have access to this information.”

Henry, however, could not have been pleased. In his email to students, he noted that “this year’s ranking is all the more incomprehensible given that Stern clearly dominates the schools ranked 15-19 this year, outperforming each of them often by substantial margins on at least six of the eight criteria.” As an example, he compared the results of his school with UCLA’s Anderson School of Management (see below).

Henry says Stern takes full responsibility for its oversight. “Once Stern learned of the omission, we forwarded the missing data point to U.S. News and requested them to re-run their computations so that the rankings could better reflect reality,” he wrote. “U.S. News declined this request, even though we believe the ranking as published is anomalous and inconsistent with the reported inputs on the eight criteria.

‘STERN’S QUALITY IS NO DIFFERENT THIS WEEK THAN IT WAS LAST WEEK’

“Going forward, as we strive to improve the school’s actual performance on every front, we will also further tighten significantly the procedure for data submission so such lapses do not occur in the future.  Finally, let us remember that while rankings matter because they are an important reference for prospective students, the reality of Stern’s quality is no different this week than it was last week.”

Bottom line, says Henry: “You shouldn’t accept it (the ranking) at face value.”

That may be true, but for tens of thousands of readers, it may not make much of a difference.

DON’T MISS: BIG CHANGES IN U.S. NEWS’ NEW MBA RANKING or THE BIG WINNERS & LOSERS IN U.S. NEWS’ 2016 MBA RANKING