The U.S. News Best Colleges rankings 2013 edition, published online on Sept. 12, 2012, is based on up to 16 key measures of quality, described below. U.S. News uses these measures to capture the various dimensions of academic quality at each college.
The measures fall into seven broad categories: peer assessment; graduation and retention rates; faculty resources (class size, for example); student selectivity (for example, average admissions test scores of incoming students); financial resources; alumni giving; and, for the National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges categories only, graduation rate performance and high school counselor undergraduate academic reputation ratings.
The indicators include both input measures, which reflect the quality of students, faculty, and other resources used in education, and outcome measures, which capture the results of the education an individual receives.
Scores for each measure are weighted as shown below to arrive at a final overall score. A more detailed explanation of the ranking indicators and methods appears below in our methodology and our definitions of ranking criteria.
This table below shows the relative percentage weights assigned to each ranking category and subfactor for the variables used in the rankings for National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities, and Regional Colleges.
| Ranking Category | Category Weight | Subfactor | Subfactor Weight | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges |
Regional Universities and Regional Colleges |
National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges |
Regional Universities and Regional Colleges |
||
| Undergraduate academic reputation | 22.5% | 25% | Peer assessment survey | 66.7% | 100% |
| High school counselors' ratings | 33.3% | 0% | |||
| Student selectivity for fall 2011 entering class | 15% | 15% | Acceptance rate | 10% | 10% |
| High school class standing in top 10% | 40% | 0% | |||
| High school class standing in top 25% | 0% | 40% | |||
| Critical Reading and Math portions of the SAT and the composite ACT scores | 50% | 50% | |||
| Faculty resources for 2011-2012 academic year | 20% | 20% | Faculty compensation | 35% | 35% |
| Percent faculty with top terminal degree in their field | 15% | 15% | |||
| Percent faculty that is full time | 5% | 5% | |||
| Student/faculty ratio | 5% | 5% | |||
| Class size, 1-19 students | 30% | 30% | |||
| Class size, 50+ students | 10% | 10% | |||
| Graduation and retention rates | 20% | 25% | Average graduation rate | 80% | 80% |
| Average freshman retention rate | 20% | 20% | |||
| Financial resources | 10% | 10% | Financial resources per student | 100% | 100% |
| Alumni giving | 5% | 5% | Average alumni giving rate | 100% | 100% |
| Graduation rate performance | 7.5% | 0% | Graduation rate performance | 100% | 0% |
| Total | 100% | 100% | — | 100% | 100% |
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