Why do private schools fare better than publics in the U.S. News rankings?
Overall, private colleges and universities do better on several measures in our ranking model, including student selectivity, graduation and retention rates, and class size. Because of their mission to serve students in their state, publics generally don’t score as high on selectivity as private colleges that have more stringent admissions standards. In addition, public colleges and universities tend to have lower graduation and retention rates and larger classes. Finally, the public schools often lack the financial resources of the better-endowed private universities or have suffered from budget cuts due to the current economic recession.
