NASHVILLE, Tenn. – For the fourth year in a row, Vanderbilt University ranked among the top 20 national universities in the U.S. News & World Report annual Best Colleges rankings.
Also, this week, Newsweek named Vanderbilt one of its 25 Hot Schools. Praising the university’s “cohesive student community,” the magazine editors identified Vanderbilt as one of the “new Ivies,” schools that provide great academics and first-rate faculties.
In the U.S. News survey, Vanderbilt was ranked 18th among national universities and again recognized for its value, economic diversity and service learning programs. The School of Engineering again placed among the top 50 undergraduate programs.
Vanderbilt was 15th among national universities designated as “great schools” with “great prices.” This ranking is determined by relating a school’s academic quality – as indicated by its U.S. News ranking – to the net cost of attendance for a student who receives the average level of need-based financial aid. According to the magazine, “The higher the quality of the program and the lower the cost, the better the deal.”
Vanderbilt is included in a list of schools that are striving to achieve economic diversity. The magazine determines this listing by focusing on the percentage of undergraduates in the top 25 schools receiving federal Pell Grants for low-income students. Pell Grants are typically rewarded to students whose family’s annual income is less than $40,000. The magazine lists Vanderbilt’s percentage of Pell Grant recipients at 12 percent. The leader in this area by far is the University of California-Berkeley with 34 percent. Several schools are second with 16 percent. The others range from 15 to 7 percent.
For the fifth year, U.S. News highlights schools with “outstanding examples of academic programs that are believed to lead to student success.” Vanderbilt’s service learning programs have been cited all five times.
Of the School of Engineering’s 43rd place ranking, in a tie with four other schools, Dean Kenneth Galloway said, “We are pleased to have our school recognized as one of the top 50 undergraduate engineering programs in the nation. We have great company in our ranking of 43 with Yale, Lehigh, Notre Dame and Michigan State University. Our approach is to fully integrate a first-class engineering education into Vanderbilt’s superb liberal arts program, which gives our students depth and agility along with engineering expertise.”
“Rankings of engineering schools are strongly skewed by several metrics that are directly related to sheer numbers of engineering faculty. If you compare Vanderbilt Engineering with others in our category of Ph.D.-granting programs with fewer than 100 full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty, our school consistently ranks in the top 10 nationally.”
This is the 19th consecutive year Vanderbilt has been chosen by the magazine as one of the top 25 national universities.
The full rankings are available at the U.S. News website, www.usnews.com/. and will be available in the magazine on newsstands Monday, Aug. 21.
For more news about Vanderbilt, visit the News Service homepage at www.vanderbilt.edu/News.
U.S. News & World Report’s 2007 top 25 National Universities:
1) Princeton University
2) Harvard University
3) Yale University
4) California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University
7) University of Pennsylvania
8) Duke University
9) Columbia University, Dartmouth College, University of Chicago
12) Cornell University, Washington University in St. Louis
14) Northwestern University
15) Brown University
16) Johns Hopkins University
17) Rice University
18) Vanderbilt University, Emory University
20) University of Notre Dame
21) Carnegie Mellon University, University of California-Berkeley
23) Georgetown University
24) University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of Virginia
Contact: Elizabeth Latt, (615) 322-NEWS
Elizabeth.p.latt@vanderbilt.edu