Even though I have been off the job market for quite a while, I still visit the US News rankings from time to time to look up information about various schools, such as enrollment or location. During a recent visit I put in the name of my own school and was surprised to find that it now has an actual numeric ranking rather than being placed in the alphabetical “Tier 3” category. The reason for the change was not, it turns out, that my school has gotten remarkably better since my arrival. Instead, US News has decided that they have enough information about liberal arts schools to rank those that are in the top 75% instead of the top 50% as they have done in the past.
In the past, the top 50% made up Tier 1, the next 25% made up Tier 3, and the final 25% made up Tier 4. In addition to numbering more schools, the bottom 25% is now designated with the more respectable “Tier 2” moniker. For schools like mine, the symbolic meaning of this change seems quite large. Students and job applicants who check these rankings when considering schools may be more likely apply to a school that is ranked between 100 and 200 than they would have been to apply to one in Tier 3, even though nothing about the school has changed. Additionally, this revised ranking may be more impressive to those who have never heard of my school.
Memoirs of a SLACer 