NU up in US News rankings

Northeastern University jumped 16 spots to number 80 in the US News and World Reports rankings for 2010, which may be a reflection of increased academic prowess and diversity among the school’s incoming class.
“While it’s gratifying to see recognition of Northeastern’s continued momentum, we don’t believe the rankings can fully capture the intellectual richness of the university’s teaching and research,” said Mike Armini, vice president of marketing and communications. “We encourage people who want to learn more about Northeastern to visit our campus and see for themselves.”
US News uses the incoming class’s statistics as building blocks for a composite score. Northeastern’s class of 2014 is the 112th class within the university, ranking in with an average high school grade point average of 3.7, 1285 out of 1600 on the SAT and a mean score of 28 on the ACT.
The list, released Aug. 20, rates colleges based on academic excellence using data collected from the colleges and universities according to the US News website.
US News uses seven categories to build their composite scores including:  peer review, retention of students, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni involvement, and graduation rate performance, according to the website.
Freshman digital arts major Alex Falcon said he didn’t personally use the ratings to find schools, but saw how rankings impacted his friends’ and classmates’ school decisions.
“All my friends used ratings. They were always like, ‘what’s the top school?’, ‘I want to go to the top school.’ I’m an art major, I was just looking for a good digital art program,” he said.
This year, US News reviewed 1,477 colleges, publishing the top ten percent. Northeastern University is ranked at 80 along with Baylor University, State University of New York (SUNY)  – Binghamton and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, which all received a composite score of 44 out of 100.
Harvard University and Princeton University tied for the number one spot with a perfect composite score of 100.
The US News  changes its methodology yearly to keep up with the always changing universities.
In the past, US News had used either the SAT or ACT, taking the average score that blanketed the majority of the incoming class. This year US News calculated a percentage by using all the scores from both tests submitted to the colleges.
The peer assessment portion asks college presidents, provosts and deans to rank their fellow colleges and universities in as many areas as they feel they can comfortably assess.
Changes within the lists from year to year, much like Northeastern’s jump up 16 spots, can be accounted for by different factors, according to the US News website. The site said the changing of the methodology has possibly the biggest impact on a schools possition within the ratings on a year to year basis, because differences between schools become more apparent. 
The class of 2014 represents 1,608 different high schools worldwide and 72 countries, according to an article on the Northeastern homepage. Within the United States, 48 percent of the class comes from the 44 states outside the New England region.
Sophomore music industry major Chris Meenen said that though the rankings are going up, they aren’t very important to him.
“I don’t take much value in the ranking of the school and I feel like my grades and co-op resume can speak for themselves,” he said. “The fact that we are jumping up in the ranks is exciting, but it doesn’t affect the way I approach it.”