How U.S. News Calculates the College Rankings

Terrie Lin reads in the library at New York University.

Certainly, the host of intangibles that make up the college experience can't simply be measured by a series of data points. But for families concerned with finding the best academic value for their money, the 2012 edition of U.S. News Best Colleges rankings provides an excellent starting point for the college search. The rankings allow you to compare at a glance the relative quality of institutions based on such widely accepted indicators of excellence as freshman retention and graduation rates and the strength of the faculty. And as you check out the data for colleges already on your short list, you may discover unfamiliar schools with similar metrics, and thus broaden your options. 

Yes, many factors other than those spotlighted here will figure in your decision, including location and the feel of campus life; the range of academic offerings, activities, and sports; and cost and the availability of financial aid. But if you combine the information on this site with college visits, interviews, and your own intuition, our rankings can be a powerful tool in your quest for the right college. 

U.S. News has made some significant changes this year to the Best Colleges presentation and ranking methodology: 

1. Rankings categories have been updated: To sort colleges and universities into their appropriate ranking categories, we used the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education 2010 revisions to its highly respected Basic Classification. The Basic Classification is the traditional framework that Carnegie has used to classify colleges. The 2010 update was the first major category revision by Carnegie since 2006; that update was reflected in the 2008 Best Colleges rankings. 

As a result of this latest revision, many colleges have switched ranking categories (from National Liberal Arts to Regional Colleges, from Regional Colleges to National Liberal Arts, from Regional Universities to National Universities, or from National Universities to Regional Universities, for example) and some schools have been added to the rankings for the first time. In most cases, these category changes were the main explanation for the biggest movements in this year's Best Colleges rankings. 

The Carnegie classification has been the basis of the Best Colleges sorting system since our first ranking was published in 1983, given that it is used extensively as the basis for classifying schools by higher education researchers. For example, the U.S. Department of Education and many higher education associations use the system to organize their data and as the basis for research studies. In addition, in some cases, Carnegie Categories are used determine colleges' eligibility for grant money. 

In short, the Carnegie categories are the accepted standard in higher education. The ranking category names U.S. News uses are our own—National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities, and Regional Colleges. Which U.S. News ranking category a school appears in is based solely on its Carnegie Basic classification category. 

2. All regionally accredited for-profit institutions that grant bachelor's degrees are included in the U.S. News data collection: For the first time, U.S. News has included in the rankings all for-profit colleges and universities that grant bachelor's degrees and are regionally accredited and that were eligible to be ranked based on whether they met the specific U.S. News criteria to be included in the rankings. The for-profits include many schools that have large online bachelor's degree programs. 

3. Non-responders are handled differently: In the case of colleges that have refused to fill out the U.S. News statistical survey for at least two years, and for schools new to the rankings that did not respond to our statistical survey, we have made extensive use of the statistical data those institutions were required to report to the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on such factors as SAT and ACT scores, acceptance rates, and faculty and retention rates. 

[See a list of the schools that changed ranking categories or are new to a ranking this year.]

How does the methodology work? The U.S. News ranking system rests on two pillars. The formula uses quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality, and it's based on our researched view of what matters in education. 

First, schools are categorized by mission, derived from the breakdown of types of higher education institutions developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In some cases, they are further grouped by region. The national universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and Ph.D. programs, and emphasize faculty research. The national liberal arts colleges focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education. They award at least 50 percent of their degrees in the arts and sciences. 

The regional universities offer a broad scope of undergraduate degrees and some master's degree programs but few, if any, doctoral programs. The regional colleges focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than 50 percent of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines; this category also includes schools that have small bachelor's degree programs but primarily grant two-year associate degrees. The regional universities and regional colleges are further divided and ranked in four geographical groups: North, South, Midwest, and West. 

Next, we gather data from each college on up to 16 indicators of academic excellence. Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects our judgment about how much a measure matters. Finally, the colleges and universities in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score. 

[View a more detailed explanation of the Best Colleges methodology.] 

Schools are unranked and listed separately by category 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, schools are unranked if too few respondents to the peer assessment survey gave them a rating. Other reasons institutions are not ranked include: a total enrollment of fewer than 200 students, a large proportion of nontraditional students, and no first year students (as is the situation at so-called upper-division schools). 

Many of the for-profit institutions ended up grouped with the unranked schools, for example, because their bachelor's degree candidates are largely nontraditional students or because they don't use the SAT or ACT test scores in admissions decisions. We also did not rank a few highly specialized schools in arts, business, and engineering. 

Most of the data come from the colleges, and U.S. News takes many steps to ensure accuracy. This year, 92 percent of the 1,378 ranked colleges and universities we surveyed for the Best Colleges rankings 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 NCES. Data that did not come from this year's survey or from the NCES are footnoted. Estimates, which are never displayed by U.S. News, may be used in the ranking calculation 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 a number of categories: assessment by administrators at peer institutions, retention of students, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving, and (for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges) high school counselor ratings of colleges and "graduation rate performance." 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: 

Undergraduate academic reputation (weighting: 22.5 percent for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges; 25 percent for Regional Universities and Regional Colleges): The U.S. News ranking formula gives significant weight to the opinions of those in a position to judge a school's undergraduate academic excellence. The academic peer assessment survey allows top academics—presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions—to account for intangibles at peer institutions such as faculty dedication to teaching.

For their views on the National Universities and the National Liberal Arts Colleges, we also surveyed 1,787 counselors at public high schools that appeared in the 2010 U.S. News Best High Schools rankings and an additional 600 college counselors at the largest independent schools in nearly every state and the District of Columbia. 

Each person surveyed was asked to rate schools' academic programs on a 5-point scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Those who didn't know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark "don't know." The 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 the case of the National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges, the academic peer assessment is weighted separately as a ranking indicator and accounts for 15 percentage points of the overall rankings, and 7.5 points of the overall rankings go to the counselors' ratings which is also weighted as a distinct ranking variable. 

Both regional rankings rely on peer assessment alone. In order to reduce the impact of strategic voting by respondents, we eliminated the two highest and two lowest scores each school received before calculating the average score. Synovate, a Chicago-based global opinion research firm, collected the data in spring 2011; of the 4,580 academics who were sent questionnaires, 43 percent responded. The high school counselors' survey response rate was 13.4 percent. 

Retention (20 percent for the National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges and 25 percent for Regional Universities and Regional Colleges): The higher the proportion of freshmen who return to campus for sophomore year and eventually graduate, the better a school is apt to be at offering the classes and services that students need to succeed. 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 fall 2001 through fall 2004. Freshman retention indicates the average proportion of freshmen who entered the school in the fall of 2006 through fall 2009 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 2010-2011 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). 

Faculty salary (35 percent) is the average faculty pay, plus benefits, during the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 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 at national universities and national liberal arts colleges who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes or in the top quarter at regional universities and regional colleges (40 percent); and the acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent). 

The data are for the fall 2010 entering class. While the ranking calculation takes account of the SAT and ACT admissions test scores of all entering students, the table displays the score range for whichever test most enrolled students took. 

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 2009 and 2010 fiscal years. Spending on sports, dorms, and hospitals doesn't count. 

Graduation rate performance (7.5 percent; for national universities and national liberal arts colleges only): 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 2004 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 2008-2009 and 2009-2010, 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 so that the top school in each category received 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 are tied at the same rank appear in alphabetical order.