How U.S. News Calculates Its Best Colleges RankingsThe stats can't tell you everything you need to know, but they say a lot.By ROBERT MORSE, SAM FLANIGAN
The intangibles that make up the college experience can't be measured by a series of data points. But for families concerned with finding the best academic value for their money, the 2013 edition of the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings The intangibles that make up the college experience can't be measured by a series of data points. But for families concerned with finding the best academic value for their money, the 2013 edition of the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings The intangibles that make up the college experience can't be measured by a series of data points. But for families concerned with finding the best academic value for their money, the 2013 edition of the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings
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, 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 in the rankings 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 in the rankings with college visits, interviews, and your own intuition, our rankings can be a powerful tool in your quest for the right college.
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 their mission, which is derived from the breakdown of types of higher education institutions as refined by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's Basic Classification in 2010.
The Carnegie classification has been the basis of the Best Colleges ranking category system since our first ranking was published in 1983, given that the classification is used extensively as the basis for classifying schools by higher education researchers and is the accepted standard in higher education. The U.S. Department of Education and many higher education associations use the system to organize their data and to determinecolleges' eligibility for grant money, for example.
The category names we use are our own--National Universities,National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities, andRegional Colleges—but their definitions rely on the Carnegie principles.
National Universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and Ph.D. programs, and emphasize faculty research. National Liberal Arts Colleges focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education. They award at least 50 percent of their degrees in the arts and sciences.
Regional Universities offer a broad scope of undergraduate degrees and some master's degree programs but few, if any, doctoral programs. 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. 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.
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. And, 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).
As a result of these eligibility standards, many of the for-profit institutions have been grouped with the Unranked schools; their bachelor's degree candidates are largely nontraditional students in degree completion programs, for example, or 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. This year, 92 percent of the 1,391 ranked colleges and universities we surveyed returned their statistical information during our spring and summer 2012 data collection. It should be noted that in total,U.S. News has collected data on more than 1,800 colleges and all their data is on usnews.com, but only about 1,400 are included in the actual numerical rankings described in this methodology.
We obtained missing data from a number of sources, including the American Association of University Professors (faculty salaries), the National Collegiate Athletic Association (graduation rates), the Council for Aid to Education (alumni giving rates), and the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (information on financial resources, faculty, SAT and ACT admission test scores, acceptance rates, and graduation and retention rates).
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.
For colleges that were eligible to be ranked but refused to fill out the U.S. News statistical survey in the 2012 data collection, we have made extensive use of the statistical data those institutions were required to report to the NCES on such factors as SAT and ACT scores, acceptance rates, and faculty and retention rates. These schools are footnoted as nonresponders.
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.
The measures, their weights in the ranking formula, and an explanation of each follow:
Undergraduate academic reputation (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 a sampling of 2,213 counselors at public high schools, each of which is a gold, silver, or bronze medal winner in the most recent U.S. Newsrankings of Best High Schools, and 400 college counselors at the largest independent schools; the counselors represent nearly every state and the District of Columbia.
Each person surveyed was asked to rate schools' academic programs on a 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 accounts for 15 percentage points of the weighting, and 7.5 percentage points go to the counselors' ratings.
There was one small methodology change made for the U.S. News Best Colleges 2013 edition rankings. This year, for the first time, the most recent two years of survey results from spring 2011 and spring 2012 were averaged to compute the high school counselor reputation score. This was done to increase the number of ratings each college received from the high school counselors and to reduce the year-to-year volatility in the average counselor score.
The academic peer assessment score continues to be based only on the most recent year's results. Both the Regional Universities and Regional Colleges rankings continue to rely on one assessment score, by the academic peer group.
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. Ipsos Public Affairs collected the data in spring 2012; of the 4,571 academics who were sent questionnaires, 44 percent responded. The counselors' one-year response rate was 11 percent for the spring 2012 surveys.
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 2002 through fall 2005. Freshman retention indicates the average proportion of freshmen who entered the school in the fall of 2007 through fall 2010 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 2011-2012 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 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 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 students. 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 all for the fall 2011 entering class. While the ranking calculation takes account of both the SAT and ACT scores of all entering students, the table displays the score range for whichever test was taken by most students.
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 2010 and 2011 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 2005 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 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, 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 were rounded to the nearest whole number and ranked in descending order. Schools that are tied appear in alphabetical order.
Check out www.usnews.com over the upcoming year, as we may add content to the Best Colleges pages when we obtain additional information.
College Rankings & Lists
Get exclusive rankings of 1,600 schools. Use our tools to search for your perfect fit. And find details on scholarships, loans, and grants.
Instant Online Access to Full College Rankings and Complete School Data
Expanded Profiles
Get the whole picture for each of the 1,600+ schools in the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings. More than 500,000 data points are available exclusively to College Compass subscribers.
SAT Scores & GPAs
What does it take to get in? We break down the SAT scores, ACT scores, and high school GPAs for each college's incoming freshman class. Learn the total applicant pool size for each school, the acceptance rate, and the important dates and contact information for admissions.
Financial Aid
InfoDiscover how many students at each school receive need-based and merit-based scholarships and grants. Also learn the amount of the average aid package given to students and the total numbers of students who apply for and receive financial aid.
Campus Life & Sports
Get the full picture of the college experience. Explore the intramural sports options as well as the clubs and organizations each school offers. Also learn about the different options you will have for on-campus housing.
U.S. News My Fit Engine
Don't just look at the rankings, find the school that's right for you. Enter up to 23 different criteria and U.S. News will rank the schools based on what you tell us. You can save the schools and research them individually.
The intangibles that make up the college experience can't be measured by a series of data points. But for families concerned with finding the best academic value for their money, the 2013 edition of the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings The intangibles that make up the college experience can't be measured by a series of data points. But for families concerned with finding the best academic value for their money, the 2013 edition of the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings The intangibles that make up the college experience can't be measured by a series of data points. But for families concerned with finding the best academic value for their money, the 2013 edition of the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings
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, 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 in the rankings 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 in the rankings with college visits, interviews, and your own intuition, our rankings can be a powerful tool in your quest for the right college.
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 their mission, which is derived from the breakdown of types of higher education institutions as refined by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's Basic Classification in 2010.
The Carnegie classification has been the basis of the Best Colleges ranking category system since our first ranking was published in 1983, given that the classification is used extensively as the basis for classifying schools by higher education researchers and is the accepted standard in higher education. The U.S. Department of Education and many higher education associations use the system to organize their data and to determine
The category names we use are our own--National Universities,National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities, andRegional Colleges—but their definitions rely on the Carnegie principles.
National Universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and Ph.D. programs, and emphasize faculty research. National Liberal Arts Colleges focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education. They award at least 50 percent of their degrees in the arts and sciences.
Regional Universities offer a broad scope of undergraduate degrees and some master's degree programs but few, if any, doctoral programs. 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. 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.
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. And, 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).
As a result of these eligibility standards, many of the for-profit institutions have been grouped with the Unranked schools; their bachelor's degree candidates are largely nontraditional students in degree completion programs, for example, or 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. This year, 92 percent of the 1,391 ranked colleges and universities we surveyed returned their statistical information during our spring and summer 2012 data collection. It should be noted that in total,U.S. News has collected data on more than 1,800 colleges and all their data is on usnews.com, but only about 1,400 are included in the actual numerical rankings described in this methodology.
We obtained missing data from a number of sources, including the American Association of University Professors (faculty salaries), the National Collegiate Athletic Association (graduation rates), the Council for Aid to Education (alumni giving rates), and the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (information on financial resources, faculty, SAT and ACT admission test scores, acceptance rates, and graduation and retention rates).
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.
For colleges that were eligible to be ranked but refused to fill out the U.S. News statistical survey in the 2012 data collection, we have made extensive use of the statistical data those institutions were required to report to the NCES on such factors as SAT and ACT scores, acceptance rates, and faculty and retention rates. These schools are footnoted as nonresponders.
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.
The measures, their weights in the ranking formula, and an explanation of each follow:
Undergraduate academic reputation (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 a sampling of 2,213 counselors at public high schools, each of which is a gold, silver, or bronze medal winner in the most recent U.S. Newsrankings of Best High Schools, and 400 college counselors at the largest independent schools; the counselors represent nearly every state and the District of Columbia.
Each person surveyed was asked to rate schools' academic programs on a 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 accounts for 15 percentage points of the weighting, and 7.5 percentage points go to the counselors' ratings.
There was one small methodology change made for the U.S. News Best Colleges 2013 edition rankings. This year, for the first time, the most recent two years of survey results from spring 2011 and spring 2012 were averaged to compute the high school counselor reputation score. This was done to increase the number of ratings each college received from the high school counselors and to reduce the year-to-year volatility in the average counselor score.
The academic peer assessment score continues to be based only on the most recent year's results. Both the Regional Universities and Regional Colleges rankings continue to rely on one assessment score, by the academic peer group.
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. Ipsos Public Affairs collected the data in spring 2012; of the 4,571 academics who were sent questionnaires, 44 percent responded. The counselors' one-year response rate was 11 percent for the spring 2012 surveys.
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 2002 through fall 2005. Freshman retention indicates the average proportion of freshmen who entered the school in the fall of 2007 through fall 2010 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 2011-2012 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 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 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 students. 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 all for the fall 2011 entering class. While the ranking calculation takes account of both the SAT and ACT scores of all entering students, the table displays the score range for whichever test was taken by most students.
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 2010 and 2011 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 2005 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 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, 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 were rounded to the nearest whole number and ranked in descending order. Schools that are tied appear in alphabetical order.
Check out www.usnews.com over the upcoming year, as we may add content to the Best Colleges pages when we obtain additional information.
College Rankings & Lists
Get exclusive rankings of 1,600 schools. Use our tools to search for your perfect fit. And find details on scholarships, loans, and grants.
Instant Online Access to Full College Rankings and Complete School Data
Expanded Profiles
Get the whole picture for each of the 1,600+ schools in the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings. More than 500,000 data points are available exclusively to College Compass subscribers.
SAT Scores & GPAs
What does it take to get in? We break down the SAT scores, ACT scores, and high school GPAs for each college's incoming freshman class. Learn the total applicant pool size for each school, the acceptance rate, and the important dates and contact information for admissions.
Financial Aid
InfoDiscover how many students at each school receive need-based and merit-based scholarships and grants. Also learn the amount of the average aid package given to students and the total numbers of students who apply for and receive financial aid.
Campus Life & Sports
Get the full picture of the college experience. Explore the intramural sports options as well as the clubs and organizations each school offers. Also learn about the different options you will have for on-campus housing.
U.S. News My Fit Engine
Don't just look at the rankings, find the school that's right for you. Enter up to 23 different criteria and U.S. News will rank the schools based on what you tell us. You can save the schools and research them individually.