How We Calculate the College Rankings

Just how can rankings help you identify colleges and universities that are right for you? Certainly, the college experience consists of a host of intangibles that cannot be reduced to mere numbers. But for families, the U.S. News rankings provide an excellent starting point because they offer the opportunity to judge the relative quality of institutions based on widely accepted indicators of excellence. You can compare different schools' numbers at a glance, and looking at unfamiliar schools that are ranked near schools you know can be a good way to broaden your search.

Of course, many factors other than those we measure will figure in your decision, including the feel of campus life, activities, sports, academic offerings, location, cost, and availability of financial aid. But if you combine the information in this book with college visits, interviews, and your own intuition, our rankings can be a powerful tool in your quest for college.

For the eighth consecutive year, U.S. News helps by spotlighting schools with outstanding examples of eight types of academic programs that have been shown to enhance learning: first-year experiences, learning communities, writing in the disciplines, senior capstone, study abroad, internships or cooperative education, opportunities for undergraduate research, and service learning. 

New this year is our list of schools that have demonstrated a strong commitment to teaching. We felt that it was important to highlight schools that were recognized for this, given that some large universities emphasize graduate-level research over the undergraduate student experience. In spring 2009, U.S. News asked respondents to its peer survey to nominate up to 10 colleges in their ranking category where the faculty has an unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching. These are the schools whose faculty and administrators have placed a special emphasis on and commitment to teaching undergraduate students. Eighty schools in nine categories made our list.

And two very popular tables from last year are appearing again in the guidebook this year. One is our list of America's Best Black Colleges. This is our exclusive ranking of 80 historically black colleges and colleges and universities that are currently designated as HBCUs by the Department of Education. The other is a list we're calling Up-and-Coming Schools, which is appearing for the second year in a row. U.S. News is running this list in response to criticism that our academic peer assessment survey is too slow to pick up improvements at colleges.

In spring 2009, U.S. News asked college presidents, provosts, and admissions deans to nominate up to 10 colleges that are making improvements in academics, faculty, students, campus life, diversity, and facilities in their U.S. News ranking category. The 77 schools in nine categories that made our list are worth considering because they are making promising and innovative changes.

Pick a category. The U.S. News rankings system rests on two pillars. It relies on quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality, and it's based on our nonpartisan view of what matters in education.

How does the methodology work? First, schools are categorized by mission, derived from the basic Carnegie classification and, in some cases, by region.The national universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and Ph.D. programs, and emphasize faculty research.

The liberal arts colleges focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education. They award at least 50 percent of their degrees in the arts and sciences.

The universities-master's offer a broad scope of undergraduate degrees and some master's degree programs but few, if any, doctoral programs.

The baccalaureate colleges focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than 50 percent of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines. The baccalaureate colleges include institutions where at least 10 percent of the undergraduate degrees awarded are bachelor's degrees.

The universities-master's and baccalaureate colleges categories are further subdivided by geography—North, South, Midwest, and West.

Next, we gather data from each college for up to 15 indicators of academic excellence. Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects our judgment about how much a measure matters. Finally, the colleges in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score. (A more detailed explanation is available at www.usnews.com/college.)

Schools are unranked and listed separately for America's Best Colleges 2010 if they have indicated that they don't use the SAT or ACT test scores in admissions decisions for first-time, first-year, degree-seeking applicants. In a few cases, they are unranked if their school didn't receive enough responses from other academics on the peer assessment survey to allow us to use their peer score as part of the overall ranking.

Other schools were unranked for the following reasons: a total enrollment of fewer than 200 students; a vast proportion of nontraditional students; no first-year students (these are sometimes called upper-division schools). We did not rank a few specialized schools in arts, business, or engineering.

Sources, sources ... Most of the data come from the colleges—and U.S. News takes pains to ensure their accuracy. This year, 91.2 percent of the 1,477 colleges and universities we surveyed returned their statistical information. We obtained missing data from sources such as the American Association of University Professors, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Council for Aid to Education, and the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. Data that did not come from this year's survey are footnoted. Estimates, which are never published by U.S. News, may be used when schools fail to report particular data points. Missing data are reported as N/A in the ranking tables.

The indicators we use to capture academic quality fall into seven categories: assessment by administrators at peer institutions, retention of students, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving, and (for national universities and liberal arts colleges) "graduation rate performance," the difference between the proportion of students expected to graduate and the proportion who actually do. The indicators include input measures that reflect a school's student body, its faculty, and its financial resources, along with outcome measures that signal how well the institution does its job of educating students. Following are detailed descriptions of the indicators used to measure academic quality:

Peer assessment (weighting: 25 percent). The U.S. News ranking formula gives greatest weight to the opinions of those in a position to judge a school's undergraduate academic excellence. The peer assessment survey allows the top academics we consult—presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions—to account for intangibles such as faculty dedication to teaching. Each individual is asked to rate peer schools' academic programs on a 5-point scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Those who don't know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly are asked to mark "don't know." The peer score used in the rankings is the average score of those who rated the school on the 5-point scale; don't knows are not counted as part of the average. In order to reduce the impact of strategic voting by respondents, before calculating the average score we eliminated the two highest and two lowest votes each school received. Synovate, an opinion-research firm based near Chicago, in spring 2009 collected the data; of the 4,273 people who were sent questionnaires, 48 percent responded. This is up slightly from last year's 46 percent response rate.

Retention (20 percent in national universities and liberal arts colleges and 25 percent in master's and baccalaureate colleges). The higher the proportion of freshmen who return to campus the following year and eventually graduate, the better a school is apt to be at offering the classes and services that students need to suc ceed. This measure has two components: six-year graduation rate (80 percent of the retention score) and freshman retention rate (20 percent). The graduation rate indicates the average proportion of a graduating class who earned a degree in six years or less; we consider freshman classes that started from 1999 through 2002. Freshman retention indicates the average proportion of freshmen who entered the school in the fall of 2004 through fall 2007 and returned the following fall.

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.

How can you best use our rankings? Mining the data for the information you need can definitely inform your thinking. The hard work is up to you.