WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. News & World Report is explaining why it "unranked" George Washington University in its listing of Best Colleges when other schools that misreported data kept their rankings.

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GW lost its ranking Wednesday after the school revealed it had overstated the number of students listed in the top 10 percent of their high school classes by 20 percentage points.

U.S. News Director of Data Research Bob Morse writes Friday that in two previous cases at other schools, the corrected data wouldn't have changed their rankings. In GW's case, the school's ranking would have been lower. Morse says it's U.S. News policy in such an instance to unrank the institution until the next publication.

Earlier this year, Emory University and Claremont McKenna College kept their rankings after misreporting data.