How we rank schools
Our method and information-packed tables serve families well
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 we believe that it is possible to objectively compare schools on one key attribute: academic excellence. The tables that appear on the following pages should help you weigh some of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the schools that you're considering.
In studying the tables it's important to remember that their best use is for comparing colleges within a category. Since we may change our methodology from year to year, we do not invite readers to track colleges' annual moves in the rankings. This year, for instance, while we did not alter our ranking formula, we recategorized many schools. Why? In late 2000, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching released an updated version of its Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, a grouping system that U.S. News has used as the basis for its ranking categories since 1983. In short, if Carnegie moved a school from one category to another, we also switched the school into the new category.
In addition, U.S. News this year changed the names of our ranking categories to better reflect their missions, as described by the Carnegie classification system. Our old "national universities" grouping has become "national universities-doctoral"; "national liberal arts" has become "liberal arts colleges-bachelor's"; "regional universities" has become "universities-master's," and "regional liberal arts" has become "comprehensive colleges-bachelor's." In this issue we provide the top tier for each category; information on the other schools can be found in the America's Best Colleges guidebook and at usnews.com.
The national universities-doctoral offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and Ph.D. degrees, and emphasize faculty research (Page 106). The liberal arts colleges-bachelor's focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education (Page 108). They award at least 50 percent of their degrees in the liberal arts. The universities-master's offer a full range of undergraduate degrees and some master's degree programs but few, if any, doctoral programs (Page 110). The comprehensive colleges-bachelor's focus on undergraduate education (Page 114) but grant fewer than 50 percent of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines. The universities-master's and comprehensive colleges-bachelor's categories are further subdivided by geographic area--North, South, Midwest, and West.
Switchover. In total, about 200 schools switched U.S. News ranking categories as a result of the changes made to the Carnegie system. Moreover, approximately 50 new schools were added to the rankings. If a school jumped ranking categories or is new to the rankings this year, it has been footnoted on the ranking tables.
The method that U.S. News uses to rank colleges and universities consists of three basic steps. First, the schools are categorized by mission and, in some cases, also by region, and we gather data from each on up to 16 indicators of academic excellence. Second, each factor is assigned a weight that reflects our judgment about how much each measure matters. Finally, the colleges in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score. We publish the ranks of the top schools; the others are grouped into tiers.
Most of the data come directly from the colleges--this year, 94 percent of the schools returned surveys. We assess the data to ensure their accuracy and obtain missing data from sources such as Wintergreen/Orchard House, the American Association of University Professors, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Council for Aid to Education, and the U.S. Department of Education. Footnotes identify data that did not come from this year's survey. Estimates may be used when schools fail to report particular data points used in the rankings or when the information reported doesn't meet our data-reporting standards.
Below are brief descriptions of the seven measures we use to capture academic quality. More-detailed descriptions of our indicators, their relative weights in our ranking formula, and other aspects of our methodology are available at www.usnews.com.
Academic reputation. The U.S. News ranking formula gives greatest weight (25 percent of the final score) to undergraduate reputation because the reputational survey allows the top academics we contact (university presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions) to account for intangibles such as faculty dedication to teaching in their assessment of schools. Market Facts Inc., an opinion-research firm based near Chicago, collected the reputational data; 67 percent of the 4,087 individuals sent questionnaires responded.
Retention and graduation rates. The higher the proportion of freshmen who return to campus the following year and eventually graduate, the better a school may be at offering the classes and services students need to succeed.
Faculty resources. Research shows that the more satisfied students are with their contact with professors, the more they will learn and the more likely it is they will graduate.
Student selectivity. A school's academic atmosphere is determined in part by the abilities of the incoming students (as assessed by their test scores and class rank, among other indicators).
Financial resources. Generous per-student spending indicates that a college is able to offer a wide variety of programs and services.
Graduation rate performance (used for national universities-doctoral and liberal arts colleges-bachelor's). This indicator of "added value" captures the effect of the college's programs and policies on the graduation rate of students after controlling for spending and student aptitude.
Alumni giving rate. The percentage of alumni who gave to their school during the 1999 and 2000 academic years is an indirect measure of alumni 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 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.
This story appears in the September 17, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.