I just copied my post from another thread here
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Recently I had a chat with an Aggie friend who worked in education field in another country, she asked me if I know A&M ranks lower and lower every year on US News, I got shocked and went back to do some research on how US News rank the universities. Some factors like class size definitely favor small size private schools and give A&M negative impact, others like admitted average SAT scores & retention rate also don't give A&M enough justice compared to other public schools. Now UC Berkeley has more than 20% of out of state students, if it is also required to admit top 10% from all California schools, will it hold its rank? I don't think so. One can always argue that the current ranking methodology used by US News is flawed blah blah blah, but in the game, play by the rules. A high ranking and good international reputation can help a school recruit more qualified professors, get more funding, and therefore attract more students.
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Later I checked another ranking mechanism US News has, Best Global Universities Rankings, for which US News only considers academic factors, such as research reputation, papers, books published, citation impact factor, etc. Guess what? A&M ranks at 105, much lower than many of the "competitors", I remember more than 10 years ago I saw a similar rank and A&M ranked top 50 globally!
Some departments within A&M are very ambitious, try to boost the reputation by hiring reputable professors, hosting conference to lead the industry, it is sad to see the school in general is going a downward trend. Which is more scary is in academic field, top 50 is tier 1, top 100 is tier 2, for most smart people I talked to, they wouldn't want to work in a university ranked below top 100, which means it will be very difficult for A&M to recruit reputable professors after 5 years...