Two schools — Lindenwood University in Missouri and Rollins College in Florida — recently advised U.S. News that they submitted inflated data that were used in the 2015 Best Colleges rankings.
In the Lindenwood case, the misreported data resulted in its numerical rank being higher than it otherwise might have been in the Regional Universities (Midwest) category. In the Rollins case, the misreported data did not result in a change in its numerical rank in the Regional Universities (South) category.
Because of the discrepancy in Lindenwood’s rankings, U.S. News has moved Lindenwood to the ” Unranked” category in the 2015 edition of the Best Colleges rankings on usnews.com. Unranked means that U.S. News did not calculate numerical rankings for those schools.
In addition, we have removed Lindenwood from the Best Colleges for Veterans rankings since those require schools to first be numerically ranked in the overall Best Colleges rankings.
The school’s Unranked status will last until the publication of the next Best Colleges rankings and until Lindenwood confirms the accuracy of its next data submission in accordance with U.S. News’ requirements.
We have noted this Unranked status on Lindenwood’s profile page, and have included its new data reported as correct by the school on usnews.com and in the U.S. News College Compass tool.
Lindenwood advised U.S. News that it submitted incorrect counts for the number of alumni donors to the school in the 2012-2013 time period. These data are used to compute the school’s two-year average alumni giving rate.
The school told U.S. News that its correct number of alumni donors in the 2012-2013 period was 2,411, versus the incorrect number of 12,411 as originally reported. As a result, its correct two-year average alumni giving rate is 11.9 percent, compared with the incorrect rate of 37.5 percent that was originally reported to U.S. News, a 25.6 percentage point difference.
A school’s average alumni giving rate is used in the overall Best Colleges rankings methodology and has a weight of 5.0 percent of the ranking.
Rollins advised U.S. News that it submitted incorrect counts for the number of students admitted for the school’s fall 2013 entering class. These data are used to compute the school’s acceptance rate.
The school told U.S. News that its correct number of fall 2013 students admitted was 2,783, versus the 2,233 figure originally reported, and resulted in an acceptance rate of 58.8 percent, compared with the incorrect rate of 47.2 percent that was originally reported to U.S. News, an 11.6 percentage point difference.
A school’s acceptance rate is used in the overall Best Colleges rankings methodology and has a weight of 1.5 percent of the ranking.
However, the difference between Rollins’ misreported data and newly reported data wasn’t significant enough to affect the school’s numerical rank in its ranking category. Therefore, based on our calculations, the school’s published numerical rank in the 2015 Best Colleges rankings is correct and will not change.
U.S. News has replaced Rollins’ misreported school data on usnews.com and in the U.S. News College Compass tool with the new data reported as correct by the school for the fall 2013 entering class, where such data were provided by the school.
U.S. News will continue to handle each case of data misreporting on an individual basis.
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Updates to 2 Schools’ 2015 Best Colleges Rankings Data originally appeared on usnews.com
Correction 10/08/14: A previous version of this post misstated Rollins College’s fall 2013 entering class statistics as provided to U.S. News.
