Baylor's U.S. News College Rankings Released
by Alan Hunt (254) 710-6271
Related Story: Baylor Featured in The Princeton Review College Guide, 'The Best 361 Colleges - 2006 Edition'.
Baylor University tied for 78th place out of 248 top national doctoral-granting universities in the 2006 edition of America's Best Colleges survey released today (Aug. 19) by U.S.News & World Report. Last year, Baylor was ranked 84th.
The U.S. News survey also ranks Baylor's engineering program among the country's top 25 programs. Baylor's Hankamer School of Business is ranked 66th in the "Best Undergraduate Business Programs" category. Hankamer placed 12th among business schools without a doctoral program and 24th among private schools. Last year, Hankamer was ranked in 77th place. Also ranked is Hankamer's entrepreneurship program, which is again rated by U.S. News as the 10th best program in the nation, the same as last year.
Baylor's 78th place overall ranking puts the university tied for third position among Big 12 schools included in the survey and in fifth place among the 16 Texas universities listed. Baylor is tied for the 78th spot with the University of Colorado at Boulder, another Big 12 school; Clemson University; North Carolina State University-Raleigh; St. Louis University; and Virginia Tech.
"Baylor's position in the U.S. News rankings places us among some very fine universities, and it is gratifying to be in the company of these institutions," said Baylor Interim President William D. Underwood. "While external recognition of Baylor's quality is welcome, the best measure of the true excellence of our program is the tremendous impact that Baylor graduates have had and are having in communities throughout Texas and the world."
The first 124 universities are ranked numerically in the rankings of doctoral-granting universities. Baylor is included in this category. The others are listed alphabetically in third and fourth tier categories. Two Texas universities are in the third tier, and eight in the fourth tier. Of the 248 schools in this year's survey, 86 are private and 162 public.
U.S. News said the ranking formula for its "Best National Universities" survey relies on several factors, including 15 indicators of academic quality gathered from each school; assessment by administrators at peer institutions; student retention; facility resources; student selectivity; financial resources; alumni giving; class size; student/faculty ratio; and graduation rate performance. Baylor's overall score on the survey increased by two points this year - from 46 last year to 48.
In the survey category headed "classes under 20," Baylor is credited with 35 percent, and under the category "classes of 50 or more," Baylor is listed at 10 percent. This is a one percentage point reduction over last year's "classes of 50 or more" figure and a two percentage point drop over the figure for 2003. The university's peer assessment, or academic reputation score, is rated at 3.2 out of a possible 5.0, and the average freshman retention rate is 84 percent. The number of full time faculty at Baylor is listed as 95 percent, which represents a one percentage point increase over last year. Another increase is reflected in the category headed "freshmen in top 10% of high school class." Baylor's percentage is given as 39 percent, which is an increase of one percentage point over last year. Baylor's average alumni giving rate is listed at 24 percent.
Baylor's engineering program is ranked 21st in the "Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs" category, which is confined to undergraduate engineering courses without doctoral programs. Baylor is tied at 21st place with seven other schools. In last year's listing, Baylor was ranked 14th.
The 10th-ranked entrepreneurship program at the Hankamer School of Business is among the oldest programs of its kind in the nation. It was launched at the business school in 1977. Hankamer is tied with 10 other schools for 66th spot in the "Best Undergraduate Business Programs" category.
Several other Texas schools are highly rated in the overall U.S. News college survey, including Rice University (17th place), University of Texas-Austin (52nd place), Texas A&M University (tied for 60th), Southern Methodist University (tied for 71st), and Texas Christian University (tied for 97th place).
Baylor's graduate programs also received high marks in the 2006 Best Graduate Schools rankings released April 1 this year by U.S.News & World Report. Included in the magazine's survey were Baylor's law, nursing, education, speech-language pathology, clinical psychology, social work, biological sciences, and the two Baylor-U.S. Army programs operated at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.
The U.S. News rankings can be found at www.usnews.com. The "America's Best Colleges" newsstand guide and the college guide issue of U.S.News & World Report will both go on sale Aug. 22.