GW continued its steady climb in Forbes magazine’s top-college rankings, landing the No. 77 slot and jumping forward in the list for the fourth year in a row this week.
The University moved up 11 spots from last year, and managed to stay in the rankings even after the business magazine announced that it would kick out colleges that had forged admissions statistics, like Emory University and Claremont McKenna College. The magazine wrote that those colleges were ousted from the rankings this year “as a penalty for their dishonesty.”
GW was unranked last November by U.S. News and World Report – often considered the gold standard in college rankings – because the University provided the magazine with inflated admissions data for over a decade. Administrators, however, have maintained that the mistake was unintentional and “without malice.”
Forbes reporter Abram Brown did not return a request for comment on why GW stayed on the list.
Forbes also considers different data than U.S. News in their evaluation of top colleges, weighting measures like RateMyProfessor scores, student debt and even how influential alumni are.
Stanford University beat out Pomona College and Princeton University for the top spot this year. Georgetown came in at N0. 26, New York University was No. 56, University of Maryland-College Park was No. 73, and American University was No. 116.
