By Wilder Perkins
U.S. News & World Report has published a ranking of the "Best Colleges" since 1983, and during that time, they've made many changes to how they calculate their rankings.
This interactive website visualizes those formula changes, and provides a few insights into the reasons behind some of the changes.
On the next page, you can explore the graph by moving your mouse, and read more details in the text below the graph. The factors that received the biggest changes are highlighted on the graph. If you click to lock your year selection in place, you’ll also see buttons that you can click to go forward or backward 1 year.
Click the tabs in the top right corner to switch between Basic View (where only the 9 main factors are shown) and Advanced View (where the factors are broken down into subfactors).
Click on the year in the heading at the top to view the original U.S. News methodology page that I’m sourcing all my information from.
You can get to this page at any time by clicking the “Back to instructions” button.