The university reports that it supplied incorrect data for many years.
Emory University acknowledged today that it had intentionally supplied incorrect ranking data, including average SAT scores, ACT scores, and high school class standing of incoming freshmen, to U.S. News from 2000 through 2011. The data reported in 2011 were used in the current 2012 edition of the Best Colleges rankings and were given a weight of 13.5 percent in the rankings methodology.
The school also misreported the same data on other surveys, including to the U.S. Department of Education and many other publishers, such as College Board and Peterson's.
"We deplore the long-standing misreporting which Emory made public today, but we're encouraged that the university disclosed it," says U.S. News & World Report Editor and Chief Content Officer Brian Kelly. "We appreciate the university's commitment to fixing its data process. We've always believed that honest data reporting is in everyone's interest. Our preliminary calculations show that the misreported data would not have changed the school's ranking in the past two years (No. 20) and would likely have had a small to negligible effect in the several years prior. We will continue to review the matter."
The school has certified the accuracy of the data it reported recently to U.S. News for the 2013 edition of Best Colleges, which will be released on September 12.
To learn more, see Emory's FAQs about the data reporting.
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