Entries for August 2008

If you are interested in which are the best U.S. public colleges and universities, U.S. News has just posted the top-ranked public schools from the 2009 edition of America's Best Colleges. The public schools are ranked within our 10 categories. Go to the links below to see which colleges are the top-ranked publics.

Top Public Colleges and Universities

• National Universities
• Liberal Arts Colleges
• Master's Universities-North
• Master's Universities-South
• Master's Universities-Midwest
• Master's Universities-West
• Baccalaureate Universities-North
• Baccalaureate Universities-South
• Baccalaureate Universities-Midwest
• Baccalaureate Universities-West

The debate about the potential impact of a possible change in the U.S. Newsmethodology for the upcoming law schools rankings continues to grow. Today, the Wall Street Journal weighs in with the front-page story "Law School Rankings Reviewed to Deter 'Gaming.'" The article offers up one analysis of the potential effect the inclusion of part-time students in the rankings data could have on the future of part-time law school programs.

Some background: In my blog post "Changing the Law School Ranking" Formula, we discussed the idea of combining both full-time and part-time entering student admission data for median LSAT scores and median undergraduate grade-point averages in the calculation of the school's ranking. Our current law school ranking methodology counts only full-time student data. Just to be clear, U.S. News is carefully contemplating the potential impact of such a methodology change; we will not make a decision until January 2009.

The new America's Best Colleges 2009 edition rankings go live on August 22. How does U.S. News ensure the integrity of the data and the rankings that we publish?

We have a five-step process:

First step: U.S. News uses definitions of the data that have been developed by experts in higher education to achieve data comparability among schools. The ranking data questions contained in the statistical questionnaires we sent to colleges in the spring and summer of 2008, as in the past, either follow the standardized format in the Common Data Set or conform to definitions used by the U.S. Department of Education or other higher-education organizations.

It's getting very close to the launch of the next America's Best Colleges rankings: The 2009 edition is going to be published on Friday, August 22, the day that the new rankings go live on our website. The site will have the most complete version of the rankings, tables, and lists, and have extensive profiles on each school. The America's Best Colleges website also will have wide-ranging interactivity and search features to enable students and parents to find the school that best fits their needs.

These exclusive rankings will also be published in the magazine's September 1-8 issue and a newsstand guidebook, both of which will go on sale beginning Monday, August 25. The main rankings include the national universities and liberal arts colleges. In addition, there will be two new rankings. The first will be a list of "Up and Coming Institutions"—the colleges making innovative improvements. The second will be our first-ever rankings of colleges by public high school counselors. In addition, we will be publishing our second annual ranking of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.