Shocking New Best College Rankings Shake Up the Top School in Texas Debate: This New No. 1 is Beyond Unexpected

This year’s Best Colleges & Universities in Texas rankings have been revealed, and you could say it’s a jaw-dropper.

There’s been a serious upset in the pecking order. It’s pretty big, just like everything in Texas.

Case in point: Rice University did not bring home the gold. That’s right.

Rice, which ranks No. 14 in the entire country on U.S. News & World Report’s esteemed Best Colleges list, couldn’t even crack the top spot in Texas in these new College Consensus rankings. Instead, Rice plays second fiddle to a massive underdog — San Antonio’s liberal arts college Trinity University (and its 2,334 students) — on this new list.

It seems the two colleges were nearly neck-and-neck. Trinity University earned a composite score of 75.5, and Rice University brought home a 75.2. The scores are calculated by averaging a school’s publisher consensus from “the most respected college rankings publishers” and a student consensus from each school’s attendees.

The publishers consensus is based on the rankings from 16 different publications that rank colleges, including Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, Wallethub, The Wall Street Journal and more. The five sites used to determine a school’s student consensus score include Cappex, My Plan, Niche, Students Review and Unigo.

For Trinity, the publishers and students were in agreement, giving scores of 76.5 and 74.4, respectively. But there was a huge disparity for Rice — a measly 64 points from the publishers, and a whopping 82.4 points from its students.

However, Trinity University earned a U.S. News & World Report distinction that Rice didn’t. It is the No. 1 Regional University in the West. That could explain part of the surprise.

UT’s Fall?

That’s not the only eye-opener. The University of Texas at Austin, a notoriously tough place to get into and the No. 56 overall college in America according to U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges, comes in only fourth in Texas in these new rankings.

UT does not just trail Trinity and Rice. It’s also behind Texas Lutheran University.

It’s a similar set up: near identical scores from both parties for Texas Lutheran —a composite 71.8, from a publishers’ score of 72.5 and a student score of 71 — and a massive gap between publishers and students for Texas — a composite score of 71.3 from the publishers’ 62 points and its students’ 80.6 points.

Texas A&M, another noted national heavy hitter at No. 69 in America in U.S. News & World Report’s college bible, comes in fifth in Texas in the College Consensus rankings.

Southern Methodist University, Texas Christian University, Howard Payne University, University of Dallas and Southwestern University round out this controversial Texas Top 10.

The running theme between the lesser-knowns taking out the big names is the similarity or difference between the publishers consensus and the student consensus. Across the board, there was a greater difference in opinion between those two groups for the nationally recognized schools than for the underdog winners.

Now, the question is: Will this new list have any impact come application season?