How We Do the Rankings
Student selectivity (15 percent). A school's academic atmosphere is determined in part by the abilities and ambitions of the student body. We therefore factor in test scores of enrollees on the Critical Reading and Math portions of the SAT or 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 and (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 2006 entering class.
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 2005 and 2006 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. We measure the difference between a school's six-year graduation rate for the class that entered in 2000 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). The average percentage of living alumni who gave to their school during 2004-05 and 2005-06 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.
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