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'U.S. News and World Report' Releases Annual College Rankings
Washington DC
August 23, 2005

“U.S. News and World Report” released its annual ranking of the country’s best colleges on Monday with few changes compared to last year.

Harvard and Princeton were tied for number one for the third year in a row. Yale and the University of Pennsylvania were three and four and Duke and Stanford were tied for the fifth spot. The University of California at Berkeley tied for the number 20 spot making it the best public institution, according to the rankings. None of the top 20 institutions moved more than two spots in this year’s rankings compared to 2004. Despite criticism of the ranking system “U.S. News” has not changed its ranking formula significantly in 10 years and has left it unchanged during the last three years.

This year’s guide included a new ranking for “economic diversity” in the national universities and liberal arts school categories. The ranking is based on the percentage of students enrolled that receive Pell Grants. UCLA took the top ranking for national universities with 38 percent of its students receiving Pell Grant aid and Smith claimed the top spot for liberal arts colleges with 27 percent of students receiving Pell grants.

New York boasted the most (15) schools ranked among the top public and private universities and liberal arts colleges in the country and California came in a close second with 14 schools ranked.

The annual ranking has been criticized because it does not consider many variables needed to determine the quality of education at an institute and many argue that schools end up being ranked on reputation rather than . The ranking formula considers aspects like graduation and retention rates, student to faculty ratio, students’ high school and SAT performance and financial resources.

“The Washington Monthly,” a Washington D.C. publication, issued its own rankings in response to the “U.S. News” ranking. The publication ranked schools based on the percentage of students enrolled at a school in the Army or Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), in the Peace Corps, receive a doctorate degree in a hard science, and receive Pell Grant aid. The “Monthly” also considered the percentage of federal work-study grants used for community service projects and the total amount of research spending at specific school. The “Monthly’s” goal was to see which institutions were putting taxpayer money to good use. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was ranked number one with UCLA and UC Berkley ranked two and three. Click for the rankings.