UW’s performance is up, so why is its U.S. News ranking down?

In the past six years, the University of Washington’s graduation rate has jumped significantly. The average SAT scores for its freshmen have gone up, and 92 percent of those first-year students who chose the UW were in the top 10 percent of their high-school graduating class.

So it’s a surprise to find the UW has not risen in the ranks of national universities, at least as measured by U.S. News & World Report’s Best College Rankings 2016, which were released Wednesday.