Columbia University is the first Ivy League to drop out of US News & World

Following the sudden drop in rakings last year, Columbia University has decided to stop its submissions of the undergraduate schools to U.S. News & World Report.

Columbia University announced on Tuesday, that it is the first Ivy League university to no longer contribute information to the U.S. News & World Report College Rankings.

Columbia University opted to stop providing information for ranking reasons after being concerned about the rankings' "outsized influence" on the undergraduate admissions process, according to a statement made by outgoing provost Mary C. Boyce on June 6. Affirmative action is expected to be outlawed by the Supreme Court, and Boyce noted that this may lead to reassessing the current admission policies in unfathomable ways. 

Following Columbia University math professor Michael Thaddeus' 2022 publication of a 21-page examination of the rankings, Columbia University made headlines last summer with its precipitous dip from No. 2 to No. 18 in the rankings. Thaddeus claimed in this document that Columbia University had provided data and information that was incorrect, doubtful, and highly deceptive.

Although Columbia University made the decision to withhold undergraduate enrollment statistics from CC, SEAS, and GS from the 2023 U.S. News rankings in July 2022, it did not officially leave the rankings until June 2023.

In recent years, a large number of colleges and universities have ceased to provide data to U.S. News & World, criticizing the publication's methodology and asserting that the annual College Rankings are an inadequate way to assess a school. In 2022, Yale and Harvard Law Schools dropped out of the rankings, but Columbia University is the first Ivy to remove its undergraduate institutions.