The obvious answer would be our student profile isn't good enough. We have a high acceptance rate, which means we have a wide distribution of abilities within the student body. On the other hand, Iowa State, as somebody pointed out, is in there, and their acceptance rate is over 90%, so likely they're student profile isn't that far from ours. However, in things like 6 year graduation rate average SAT, etc. they are quite a bit ahead. Quality of the professorate would be probably the biggest influence on these rankings, as measured primarily by number of grants and publications in top tier journals. State has benefited like other schools with the retirement of the boomer generation, and subsequent recruitment of younger, hungry faculty who are competitive in grants and pubs, but B10 schools have had a huge head start in that area, and will often buy promising professors from other schools that impact these rankings. There's been a good bit of discussion on this board about the challenges for our coaches to recruit athletes to a smaller city in Mississippi - same goes for faculty.