I like to think that it is because the people who lie about the numbers decided to get a little more honest. But that's probably not true...

Every year US N and WR changes their formula so that the placements wiggle a bit. If the numbers were the same year to year it would not be "news" and people would not buy issues.

I am particularly rankled about the Eng. School ranking. I don't know what to do about it but it is disappointing.

EN school's ranking is so low because the total square footage per student is ranked for ENschools, but not for other academic programs. And the School of Engineering and Applied Science is very small for the number of students it has; at least, according to USN&WR.

But never fear - there will be new buildings on the way (slated construction date: sometime after 2010). And the numbers for this year are based on the numbers on the ground for 2001 and 2002 (not 2003, because those aren't added up yet), so next year's edition will reflect the new Whitaker building (2002 and 2003 numbers, and it opened in 2003), so the EN school's ranking will shoot up some.

So if we basically built a gigantic building with nothing in it and called it an Engineering School building, our ranking will go up? That makes the rankings seem even more arbitrary and ridiculous.

In that case I claim the SAVVIS center for the Engineering school in order to conduct vital hockey-related engineering research.....

That's actually a really good idea. Perhaps the Edward Jones Dome and Fluid Dynamics Research Facility?