U.S. News released its 2027 Best Colleges rankings today, placing Cornell at No. 14 nationally in a tie with Carnegie Mellon. The two-spot dip drops Cornell to seventh among the Ivies (still better than Brown). Sadly, it hands the title of #1 School in New York back to Columbia, which rose to No. 12. Cornell had held the crown as the highest-ranked university in the state since 2023, where we now sit second. Despite the slip, the big picture remains strong. Cornell is still ranked well above where it sat just a few years ago when it hovered around No. 18, firmly keeping its place in the national top fifteen. Most of this year’s movement comes down to formula tweaks rather than classroom quality. U.S. News rolled out a new metric comparing post-grad earnings across specific majors, causing shakeups across the entire Ivy League. Ranking formulas will always fluctuate, but the real value of an Ithaca education hasn’t gone anywhere.