September 9, 2013 | | Leave a comment First off, before we proceed any further, we want to go on record as saying that college rankings do not matter. Yep, we said it. Never, under any circumstances, should you base your decision on which college or university to attend on the annual college rankings released by U.S. News, Princeton Review, or any other number of rankers. Your decision should be based on your personal preferences, career goals, and place of residence. It will be what fits you, not what fits a room full of analysts at Fortune magazine. Having said that, we can’t help checking out the stats, just for fun, to see who is where in the list. The top 25 schools are pretty boring: they play musical chairs with one another but few real upsets happen (“Princeton is number one again? Talk about exciting!”). So the real fun is in seeing which college and universities make the biggest improvements. Therein is the real drama of the college rankings. We searched the U.S. News 2014 rankings and compared them to the 2013 rankings and found that the following 14 colleges and universities had made the biggest improvements: 1. San Diego State University 2013 ranking: 183 2014 ranking: 152 Total improvement: 31 2. Polytechnic Institute of New York University 2013 ranking: 153 2014 ranking: 128 Total improvement: 25 3. University of Massachusetts 2013 ranking: 183 2014 ranking: 158 Total improvement: 25 4. University of Cincinnati 2013 ranking: 156 2014 ranking: 135 Total improvement: 21 5. Northeastern University 2013 ranking: 69 2014 ranking: 49 Total improvement: 20 6. Stony Brook-State University of New York 2013 ranking: 99 2014 ranking: 82 Total improvement: 17 7. Texas Christian University 2013 ranking: 99 2014 ranking: 82 Total improvement: 17 8. Loyola University-Chicago 2013 ranking: 117 2014 ranking: 101 Total improvement: 16 9. University of Rhode Island 2013 ranking: 167 2014 ranking: 152 Total improvement: 15 10. University of Louisville 2013 ranking: 176 2014 ranking: 161 Total improvement: 15 11. University at Albany-SUNY 2013 ranking: 143 2014 ranking: 128 Total improvement: 15 12. Boston University 2013 ranking: 56 2014 ranking: 41 Total improvement: 15 13. DePaul University 2013 ranking: 136 2014 ranking: 121 Total improvement: 15 14. University of Illinois-Chicago 2013 ranking: 143 2014 ranking: 128 Total improvement: 15 Source: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities