Washington State University again has been recognized as one of the best national universities, according to rankings just released by U.S. News and World Report.
WSU was recognized in the second tier of rankings of national universities with doctoral programs. Joining WSU in this tier are George Washington University, Michigan State University, Ohio State University and the University of Arizona. The rankings are broken down into four tiers.
WSU ranked competitively among many of the first tier universities in specific categories. Only 17 of the top 50 universities have a higher percentage of full-time faculty and just 14 of those schools have a higher percentage of classes with more than 20 students than WSU.
WSU also was named as having a top engineering program among schools whose highest degree is a doctorate. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology were also listed in this category.
These rankings will be published in “America#s Best Colleges,” the newsstand book that contains the U.S. News college rankings. The book is slated to hit stands today (Sept. 16). Most of the rankings and some of the book#s articles will be in the Sept. 23 issue of the U.S. News and World Report magazine, which also goes on sale, Sept. 16.
To devise the college rankings, U.S. News first assigns schools to a group of their peers, based on categories developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Then, data on as many as 16 indicators of academic quality are gathered from each school and tabulated. Finally, colleges are ranked in their categories by their total weighted score.
