Emerson tied with three other colleges for the 13th spot on this year’s Best Regional Universities North Rankings, dictated by the U.S. News & World Report’s annual list.
While Emerson is still ranked high on the list, the college has dropped several spots despite a steady rise throughout previous years. Emerson is tied with Siena College, Manhattan College, and Ithaca College.
U.S. News & World Report recently published an article detailing the methodology behind this year’s list of best colleges. U.S. News has “made refinements to this year’s rankings formula by dropping five longstanding factors, modifying the weights of several other factors, and introducing a few new ones.”
These refinements may be the reason for Emerson’s lower ranking on the list; however, Emerson community members have expressed varying opinions.
“U.S. News & World Report made significant changes to their methodology in ranking colleges and universities this year, such as no longer considering small class sizes or faculty with terminal graduate degrees,” President Jay Bernhardt said in an email statement to the Beacon. “The new rankings also penalize programs like Emerson that teach in fields like communication and the arts, where initial earnings are not the sole focus.”
Bernhardt attributed the change in the college’s ranking to the report’s modified methodology, not to any difference in performance.
“Emerson is still considered a highly innovative school based on other criteria within U.S. News & has numerous other high rankings in other publications, such as The Hollywood Reporter and the Sustainable Campus Index,” he said.
U.S. News stated that in this year’s list they “increased the emphasis on how often schools’ students from all socioeconomic backgrounds earned degrees and took advantage of information on graduate outcomes that was not available until recently.”
Dylan Young, Emerson College Students’ Union chair of national development, said the drop could be based on one of Emerson’s most controversial topics: financial aid.
“On U.S. News’ page, Emerson is ranked 128th in Top Performers on Social Mobility,” Young said. “Now that the list is accounting for all socioeconomic backgrounds in their ranking, it’s not surprising that Emerson is ranked much lower than before. Unlike most of its peer institutions, [the college] does not raise financial aid grants and scholarships along with tuition and inflation.”
U.S. News’ website says schools who rank high on social mobility rankings are schools that enroll and graduate large proportions of disadvantaged students awarded with Pell Grants, or money given to undergraduate students who display significant financial need.
Several students expressed financial difficulty regarding to Emerson’s tuition and aid. Sophomore VMA major Fifi Schultz said Emerson took away 66 percent of her financial aid. “I am lucky to be able to still afford to attend the school, but it has obviously heightened the financial burden on my shoulder,” Schultz said.
Working as a resident assistant has helped lighten sophomore marketing student Jacob Ramant’s financial load, but it’s still “hard to get support.”
“It is also hard to talk with staff, they get too many of the same questions and get annoyed,” Ramant added.
Despite the lower ranking the college received this year, many first-year students are still drawn to Emerson, mostly due to its specified programs.
“Emerson was unique in that it was highly ranked for journalism and film, which are my two areas of interest,” first-year journalism major Molly Boyke said. “It definitely played a part in my decision [to attend Emerson].”
