Bucknell Joins Rankings Hall of Shame

Inside Higher Ed:  How Much Admission Misreporting?:

Bucknell University [has come] forward to admit that it had misreported SAT averages from 2006 through 2012, and ACT averages during some of those years. ... [T]he inaccurate data resulted from the college leaving some students' scores out of test averages. In a few cases, the omitted students had scores higher than those reported. But most of the excluded students had lower scores, so the result of leaving them out was to inflate Bucknell's averages. "[D]uring each of those seven years, the scores of 13 to 47 students were omitted from the SAT calculation, with the result being that our mean scores were reported to be 7 to 25 points higher than they actually were on the 1600-point scale," said a letter sent to the campus from John C. Bravman, the president. "During those seven years of misreported data, on average 32 students per year were omitted from the reports and our mean SAT scores were on average reported to be 16 points higher than they actually were." ...

In 2012, Claremont McKenna College, Emory University and George Washington University all submitted false data to U.S. News about undergraduate admissions, as did Tulane University's business school with regard to M.B.A. admissions [as well as Illinois and Villanova law schools].

Bucknell is ranked #32 in the current U.S. News National Liberal Arts Colleges Rankings.