40 Colleges & Universities Receive 5 Star Academic Rating

[Anonymous]

Just purchased the 2023 edition of a college guidebook "Colleges Worth Your Money".

The book discusses 200 US colleges and universities. Each school receives an Academic Rating from a low of one star to a high of five stars. 40 schools received a 5 star Academic Rating. Of the 40 schools, 37 are private and 3 are public (UCLA, University of Virginia, and the US Naval Academy). (UC-Berkeley received 4.5 stars for academics.)

The 40 Five Star schools include 23 National Universities, 15 SLACs, the US Naval Academy, and Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

The 23 National Universities are:

Brown

CalTech

Carnegie Mellon (CMU)

Columbia

Cornell

Dartmouth College

Duke

Emory

Harvard

Johns Hopkins (JHU)

MIT

Northwestern

Princeton

Rice

Stanford

UCLA

U Chicago

Notre Dame

U Penn

U Virginia

Vanderbilt

WashUStL

Yale

The 15 SLACs are:

Amherst

Barnard

Bowdoin

Carleton College

Claremont McKenna

Davidson

Hamilton

Harvey Mudd

Haverford

Middlebury

Pomona

Swarthmore

Wash & Lee

Wellesley

Williams

[Anonymous]

In a condensed format:

National Universities receiving 5 star academic rating: The 8 Ivy League schools, CalTech, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Northwestern, Duke, Notre Dame, CMU, JHU, UCLA, Rice, WashUStL, Emory, Vanderbilt, & Virginia.

National Universities receiving 4.5 star academic rating: Michigan, Berkeley, UNC, Georgetown, NYU, USC, Texas, Univ. of Florida, UC-Irvine, UC-Santa Barbara, UC-San Diego, Tufts, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Lehigh, Univ. of Rochester, N'eastern in Boston, Boston University, & Boston College.

Selective Liberal Arts Colleges (SLACs) receiving 5 star academic rating: Amherst, Barnard, Bowdoin, Carleton, Davidson, Claremont McKenna, Hamilton, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Middlebury, Pomona, Swarthmore, USNA, Wash & Lee, Wellesley, & Williams College.

[Anonymous]

UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Agreed. Berkeley blows away UVA in academic departments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

The book lists the top academic programs at Virginia as: Biomedical Engineering, Business, Computer Science, Economics, English, Global Studies, History, and "Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law".

The academic ratings are composed of ten factors: SAT /ACT of incoming students (a weakness at Berkeley), percentage of incoming students in top 10% of their high school class, student-to-faculty ratio (another weak area for Berkeley), class size (another weak area for Berkeley), full time faculty %, Faculty with terminal degrees, mean faculty salary, freshman retention rate, six year graduation rate, and "graduation performance"--includes several factors including Pell Grant recipient graduation rates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Agreed. Berkeley blows away UVA in academic departments.

The book lists Berkeley's top programs as: Biological Science, Business, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, English, and Psychology.

[Anonymous]

Princeton Review gives academic ratings and they are one of the best selling guides. Theirs in on a scale up to 100, so more granularity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

The book lists the top academic programs at Virginia as: Biomedical Engineering, Business, Computer Science, Economics, English, Global Studies, History, and "Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law".

The academic ratings are composed of ten factors: SAT /ACT of incoming students (a weakness at Berkeley), percentage of incoming students in top 10% of their high school class, student-to-faculty ratio (another weak area for Berkeley), class size (another weak area for Berkeley), full time faculty %, Faculty with terminal degrees, mean faculty salary, freshman retention rate, six year graduation rate, and "graduation performance"--includes several factors including Pell Grant recipient graduation rates.

That sounds like USNWR with minor changes to the criteria.

[Anonymous]

Basically USN&WR T50 with minor variations

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Rankings are BS. No doubt about that. But why do DCUM people say UVA is weak in STEM? I’m not saying it is strong, I just don’t know. The same way I dint know about 99% of colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Rankings are BS. No doubt about that. But why do DCUM people say UVA is weak in STEM? I’m not saying it is strong, I just don’t know. The same way I dint know about 99% of colleges.

^ I dunno, Biomedical engineering sounds kinda STEM to me. Article says that's a strong department at UVA. And you do pretty much need to be in the top 10% of you HS class to get in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Rankings are BS. No doubt about that. But why do DCUM people say UVA is weak in STEM? I’m not saying it is strong, I just don’t know. The same way I dint know about 99% of colleges.

Because compared to other top publics and privates, UVA is weak in STEM overall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Rankings are BS. No doubt about that. But why do DCUM people say UVA is weak in STEM? I’m not saying it is strong, I just don’t know. The same way I dint know about 99% of colleges.

^ I dunno, Biomedical engineering sounds kinda STEM to me. Article says that's a strong department at UVA. And you do pretty much need to be in the top 10% of you HS class to get in.

According To USNWR, UVA isn’t top ten in the one area of Engineering that this academic rating source claims it’s so strong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Rankings are BS. No doubt about that. But why do DCUM people say UVA is weak in STEM? I’m not saying it is strong, I just don’t know. The same way I dint know about 99% of colleges.

Because compared to other top publics and privates, UVA is weak in STEM overall.

This doesn’t answer the question, it just restated what was already said. Weak in what way?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking.

Agreed. Berkeley blows away UVA in academic departments.

The book lists Berkeley's top programs as: Biological Science, Business, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, English, and Psychology.

That’s a very small sampling of Cal’s strengths. Berkeley has top programs in almost all of its offerings. Way, way more than UVA. It isn’t even close. That is only gets a 4.5 star rating from this ranking is a joke.