How We Calculate the College Rankings

Faculty resources (20 percent). Research shows that the more satisfied students are about their contact with professors, the more they will learn and the more likely it is they will graduate. We use six factors from the 2008-09 academic year to assess a school's commitment to instruction. Class size has two components: the proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (30 percent of the faculty resources score) and the proportion with 50 or more students (10 percent of the score). In our model, a school benefits more for having a large proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students and a small proportion of large classes. Faculty salary (35 percent) is the average faculty pay, plus benefits, during the 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic years, adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living (using indexes from the consulting firm Runzheimer International). We also weigh the proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields (15 percent), the student-faculty ratio (5 percent), and the proportion of faculty who are full time (5 percent).

Student selectivity (15 percent). A school's academic atmosphere is determined in part by the abilities and ambitions of the student body. We factor in the admissions test scores for all enrollees who took the Critical Reading and Math portions of the SAT and the Composite ACT score (50 percent of the selectivity score); the proportion of enrolled freshmen (for all national universities and liberal arts colleges) who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes or (for institutions in the universities—master's and baccalaureate colleges) the top 25 percent (40 percent); and the acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent). The data are for the fall 2008 entering class. In order to better represent the entire entering class, we are now using a value that takes into account the admissions test scores of all entering students who took the Critical Reading and Math portions of the SAT and the Composite ACT score. Previously, we used only the scores of the test that had the majority of students taking it. The scores of the test that the majority of students take are displayed on the ranking table.

Financial resources (10 percent). Generous per-student spending indicates that a college can offer a wide variety of programs and services. U.S. News measures financial resources by using the average spending per student on instruction, research, student services, and related educational expenditures in the 2007 and 2008 fiscal years. Spending on sports, dorms, and hospitals doesn't count, only the part of a school's budget that goes toward educating students.

Graduation rate performance (5 percent; only in national universities and liberal arts colleges). This indicator of "added value" shows the effect of the college's programs and policies on the graduation rate of students after controlling for spending and student characteristics such as test scores and the proportion receiving Pell grants. We measure the difference between a school's six-year graduation rate for the class that entered in 2002 and the rate we predicted for the class. If the actual graduation rate is higher than the predicted rate, the college is enhancing achievement.

Alumni giving rate (5 percent). This reflects the average percentage of living alumni with bachelor's degrees who gave to their school during 2006-07 and 2007-08, which is an indirect measure of student satisfaction.

To arrive at a school's rank, we first calculated the weighted sum of its scores. The final scores were rescaled: The top school in each category was assigned a value of 100, and the other schools' weighted scores were calculated as a proportion of that top score. Final scores for each ranked school were rounded to the nearest whole number and ranked in descending order. Schools that receive the same rank are tied and are listed in alphabetical order. Our rankings of accredited undergraduate business programs and engineering programs are based exclusively on peer assessment data gathered from the programs' deans and senior faculty members.