U.S. News and World report announced Wednesday that the status of George Washington University in the annual rankings will be 'Unranked' following the university's confession that it had inflated the scores provided to the publication for its prestigious annual rankings.
GWU made it public Nov. 8 that it had provided scores inflated by 20 percent of the incoming freshmen, which accounts for 6 percent of the publication's ranking methodology.
"Because of the discrepancy in the rankings, U.S. News has changed George Washington University from being a ranked school to an 'Unranked' school in the Best Colleges section of usnews.com," wrote U.S. News in an article announcing the action.
As Washington Post points out, due to GWU's proximity to the White House and its consistent performance in the U.S. News rankings with never falling below 54th position in last decade has made students justify its hefty tuition fee around $50,000. But now with inflated score revelation and the 'Unranked' status, GWU is bound to suffer some bad press.
The 'Unranked' status is set to last 'until next fall's publication of the 2014 edition of the Best Colleges rankings, and until George Washington confirms the accuracy of the school's next data submission in accordance with U.S. News's requirements.'
This is not the first time where a university has provided false scores to propel its ranking position. Earlier, Claremont McKenna College in California and Emory University in Atlanta disclosed that they had provided false SAT scores of freshmen. But in both cases, the publication said that the disclosure did not affect their rankings.
"We were surprised by the decision of U.S. News to remove George Washington's numerical ranking rather than to correct it in light of our disclosure," wrote GWU president Steven Knapp in a statement.
"We understand that our numerical ranking will appear in U.S. News next year. As I have said, we regret the error and have put safeguards in place to prevent such errors from occurring in the future," he wrote.
