Many people have noticed that lately, of the three big Ivy League schools (Princeton, Harvard and Yale), Yale has been ranking a lot lower than Harvard and Princeton in most of the college rankings that come out. Consistently lower. In fact, on this year's Forbes list, Yale didn't even make the top 10. Why would that be?
We did some research and the best answer that we could come up with for why Yale is lagging behind in what used to be a tight race is that college ranking services are putting more emphasis on non-academic factors like quality of life and economic value. And more than anything, New Haven, CT can't keep up with Cambridge, MA or Princeton NJ.
On a recent 2012 ranking of the Top 50 Colleges Yale came in at #10, nine spots behind Princeton and eight spots behind Harvard. We contacted Jeremy Alder of The Best Colleges to understand why there is such a big separation in what used to be a much closer competition:
According to Alder:
There are several reasons. First, graduates at Yale make comparatively less money in their careers than graduates of Harvard or Princeton. Also, as a city, New Haven is way less educated and less wealthy than either Cambridge or Princeton, but its cost of living is higher than Princeton and almost as high as Cambridge.
So more than anything, it seems that Yale is taking a beating because of its setting in New Haven. And to a lesser degree because its graduates are outperformed by those at Harvard and Princeton.
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