Excellence in Higher Education News & Information
Americans are turning to U.S. News as the premier source of information on higher education, where the Web site features more than 70,000 pages of education-focused content.
America’s Best Colleges
• Details and ranks more than 1,400 accredited four-year schools across the country.
• 2007 will be the 21st consecutive year -- U.S. News has ranked colleges every year since 1987.
• Traffic to the online rankings grew by 8% last year over 2005.
• Conduct a customized search of U.S. colleges based on variables such as location, major, financial aid, campus information, academics, sports & activities.
• Methodology: Both qualitative and quantitative, the U.S. News rankings system rests on two pillars: (1) It relies on quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality, and (2) it's based on our nonpartisan view of what matters in education.
• Rankings process is three steps: (1) Categorize schools by mission and, in some cases, by region. (2) Gather data from each college for up to 15 indicators of academic excellence; each factor is weighted. (3) rank colleges in each category against their peers, based on their composite weighted score.
• Academic quality indicators fall into seven categories: assessment by administrators at peer institutions, retention of students, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving, and (for national universities and liberal arts colleges) "graduation rate performance," the difference between the proportion of students expected to graduate and the proportion who actually do.
America’s Best Graduate Schools
• This year will be the 18th consecutive year; conducted annually starting in 1990.
• One of the nation’s only independent assessments of the academic quality of a variety of graduate school programs.
• Why rank grad schools? By collecting data annually for the fields of business, education, engineering, law, and medicine, we are able to present the most current figures on enrollment, job placement, faculty, and other critical quality indicators that help you make informed decisions. In other graduate fields, we usually gather data on a program every three or four years, asking the experts who teach and direct programs in these fields to evaluate their peer programs.
• Two methodologies: (1) For the five graduate program areas with the largest enrollments–business, education, engineering, law, and medicine–we use a combination of statistical data and expert assessment data. (2) We also rank a variety of programs–including Ph.D. programs in the sciences and humanities and programs in healthcare and the arts–solely on the basis of peer assessment data from academics involved in that particular field.
Getting In
Your weekly guide to getting into college
• Tips on acing the interview, writing a standout college essay, and more
• A News You Can Use® series of articles to help with the application process: early decision or not? A year off? Sizing up schools for the arts, A+ schools for B students, and more
Paying for College
A host of tips on making college affordable
• Includes articles and News You Can Use® on financial aid basics, budgeting, borrowing, ideas for scholarships and other “free money,” working through college, cut your costs, savings.
• Also features enterprise reporting, a recent analysis of hundreds of financial aid letters to prospective students reveals secrets of the system.
• Authored primarily by USN’s Kim Clark, senior writer in the Money & Business section, has more than 20 years of experience as a journalist. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the New Republic, and she is a frequent contributor to Marketplace, the public radio business show.
Paper Trail
One Click, Every Campus. The U.S. News higher education blog
• Daily roundup of the top news stories from college newspapers around the country, www.usnews.com/papertrail.
• U.S.News & World Report updates this education blog daily with several new entries, including a brief article summary and link to each college newspaper article.
• U.S. News combs college papers to find news stories, and also will accept tips from college paper editors via email, papertrail@usnews.com.
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