WPI finds its place in national college rankings

As was the case last year, when WPI moved from the Regional University category, where it dominated the Northern region, WPI is listed in the second tier of National Universities. These schools, classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the advancement of teaching, "offer a full range of baccalaureate programs and are committed to graduate education through the doctorate." As former President Strauss put it when we changed categories "we are in good company."

U.S. News ranks the first fifty National Universities and then offers the rest, there are 229, in three tiers. The second tier consists of the schools that rank 51-115 and includes such schools as: American University, Boston University, UConn and WPI. The top school in the nation is deemed to be Harvard, followed by Princeton, Yale, Stanford and MIT. Vanderbilt University is listed as 22nd.

Rankings are determined by a number of factors, including academic reputation (determined by a survey of college presidents, deans and admissions directors), faculty resources (ratio of faculty to students, percentage of faculty with doctorates, percentage of faculty with part-time status and average salary and benefits offered), financial resources, alumni satisfaction (determined by donations to the school), SAT scores, freshmen in the top 10% of their high school class, acceptance rate, yield (percentage of those accepted who enroll), and retention (percentage of students who graduate in six years and percentage of freshmen who return for a second year).

WPI does very well in most of these categories and indeed could be in the top fifty except for one small problem. National reputation, which puts us at 129, this part of the rankings counts for 25% of the overall score and puts us second from the bottom in the alphabetical second tier.

We should not be disappointed with this placement as it is similar to last year's and speaks well for the Institute. The disappointing part of the report is that for the first time ever, U.S. News also sought to rank the top fifty engineering schools. Surely one would expect us to be in this category, as one in three of the schools in the top two tiers are not engineering specific. We are not.

This part of the report is based solely on a survey of ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) associated school's deans and administrators. Two respondents at each school were asked to rank each school based on reputation. There was a 46% response rate and here again, WPI suffers (presumably) from a good national reputation.

Many of the schools listed in this top fifty here are predominately research oriented and not teaching oriented schools, like MIT, which placed first. These schools would obviously have a better reputation among ABET associated school administrators.

There are many methods of ranking colleges and WPI traditionally does well on a good number of them, including U.S. News and World Report's "Best Values," which comes out after the college rankings issues. Last year we were a runner up as a National University, in terms of Discount Tuition (a measure of the financial aid offered to all students).

If anything, this shows WPI where it might wish to work to improve its national reputation and where we are currently doing a good job.