Baylor Entrepreneurship, Engineering Programs Receive High Marks From U.S. News

September 6, 2001

by Alan Hunt

Baylor University's entrepreneurship and engineering programs get high marks in the latest listing of America's Best Colleges, compiled by U.S. News & World Report.
The survey was announced Thursday evening.
Baylor's entrepreneurship program in the Hankamer School of Business is ranked in the U.S. News top 10, as the ninth best entrepreneurship program in the nation. The magazine rated Baylor's overall undergraduate business program 62nd among the nation's top 100 best programs.
Baylor's engineering program is ranked 26th in the nation in the magazine's survey of best undergraduate engineering programs without doctoral programs.
The magazine says its rankings are based on the judgments of deans and senior faculty who rated each program they're familiar with on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Baylor's business and engineering programs each garnered an academic reputation score of 3.0. A total of 49 accredited programs are included in the engineering program survey of schools nationwide whose highest degree is a bachelor's or master's degree, while the business survey included 148 accredited programs.
The magazine's overall Best National Universities rankings include a listing of 249 top national universities. Baylor is placed among the second tier of schools ranked 53rd to 130th. Other second tier Texas schools include Southern Methodist University and Texas Christian University. The rankings consist of four separate tiers.
U.S. News & World Report says it uses various factors to arrive at the best college rankings, including academic reputation, student retention, faculty resources, student selectivity, class size, alumni giving and graduation rate performance.
Several Baylor programs also figured prominently in the "Best Graduate Schools" rankings published earlier this year by U.S. News & World Report. Baylor's Louise Herrington School of Nursing and the university's speech-language pathology, physical therapy and entrepreneurship programs were all included in the listing. Baylor Law School also received recognition in the magazine's evaluation of 174 of the nation's accredited law schools.
The newsstand book, America's Best Colleges, which contains all of the U.S. News college rankings, is slated to go on sale Sept. 10. Many of the rankings and some of the articles from the book will be in the Sept. 17 issue of the weekly newsmagazine, which also goes on sale Sept. 10. In addition, the U.S. News college rankings can be found on the magazine's web site at www.usnews.com.