University of Richmond Again Ranked in Top Tier of National Liberal Arts Colleges by U.S. News and World Report
August 18, 2006
U.S. News & World Report has again ranked the University of Richmond in the top tier of the prestigious “best liberal arts colleges” category in its annual “America’s Best Colleges” issue, which appears on newsstands next week.
It is Richmond’s second straight year in the national liberal arts category, which includes 215 colleges and universities from around the country. Richmond again tied for 34th place.
U.S. News also named Richmond one of the top 35 colleges and universities in the country in the area of undergraduate research and creative projects.
“To be ranked so highly among the leading liberal arts institutions is a tribute to all of our faculty, staff, students and alumni who have worked so hard to make Richmond such a great university,” said President William E. Cooper. “I am also pleased that the editors of U.S. News have recognized the outstanding quality of our undergraduate research program.”
Richmond first moved to the national liberal arts category in the magazine’s rankings last year. The previous 11 years, the university ranked No. 1 in the “master’s universities-South” category. Richmond requested the change because its primarily undergraduate colleges award at least half of their baccalaureate degrees in the liberal arts. Many leading, small private colleges are in the baccalaureate liberal arts category and compete with Richmond for students.
Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Wellesley and Middlebury colleges ranked first through fifth, respectively, in the national liberal arts category in this year’s rankings. Richmond tied with Sewanee—The University of the South and ranked ahead of such schools as Furman, Occidental, Dickinson, Rhodes and Franklin & Marshall. The only other Virginia school to make the top 50 was Washington and Lee University, which tied for 17th place.
U.S. News uses the following factors in developing its rankings: peer assessment, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving and graduation rate performance.
In the magazine’s “Programs to Look For” listings, Richmond was named as having one of the best undergraduate research and creative projects programs. According to U.S. News, students in those programs “do intensive and self-directed research or creative work that results in an original scholarly paper or other product that can be formally presented on or off campus.” In addition to Richmond, schools making the top 35 list included Duke, MIT, and Stanford.
Last year, Richmond provided over $500,000 in funding to more than 250 undergraduate students to conduct research and creative projects. Over 60 examples of recent student research projects, including links to student videos and journal publications, can be found at the “Student Research” section of the Richmond Research Institute Web site at http://research.richmond.edu.
Last April, BusinessWeek named the university’s Robins School of Business one of the top 25 undergraduate business programs in the country. The magazine based its rankings on surveys of some 100,000 business students, as well as around 2,000 corporate recruiters. Other factors included starting salaries of business graduates, the number of business graduates who enroll in the top-ranked MBA programs and several measures of academic quality, such as faculty-student ratios and average SAT scores.