Saint Mary’s listed in U.S. News ‘Best National Universities’ category
WINONA, Minn. — U.S. News & World Report’s 2010 edition of America’s Best Colleges has ranked Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota in its “Best National Universities” survey for 2010. The annual listing of more than 1,400 schools is available online at www.usnews.com. Rankings were announced today, Aug. 20.
Saint Mary’s is ranked in the third tier of the 262-school U.S. News “National Universities” category. Last year, U.S. News listed Saint Mary’s in the fourth tier of this category. The third tier includes schools ranked 134 through 190 and is not ranked numerically. A sampling of other universities in the third tier includes De Paul University, George Mason University, Seton Hall University, the University of St. Thomas and St. John’s University in New York.
Taking top honors in the “National Universities” category are Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University and the California Institute of Technology. Saint Mary’s, St. Thomas and the University of Minnesota are the only Minnesota schools represented in this category.
The “National Universities” category includes 164 public and 98 private institutions from across the U.S. that offer a wide range of undergraduate majors as well as master’s and doctoral degrees.
U.S. News & World Report ranks “National Universities” in a top tier, third tier and fourth tier. Its other institutional categories include: “Liberal Arts Colleges,” “Universities-Master’s” and “Baccalaureate Colleges.”
In 2006, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching reclassified SMU from a master’s comprehensive to a doctoral institution. This change in Carnegie basic classification for SMU placed it in the “National Universities” category for the U.S. News & World Report starting with the 2008 report. In 2007, SMU was in the first tier of U.S. News’ “Midwestern Colleges and Universities with Master Degree Programs” category.
The method that U.S. News uses to rank colleges and universities consists of three basic steps. The schools are categorized primarily by mission and region, and data is gathered from each institution on indicators of academic excellence. The indicators used to measure academic excellence 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 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.
