The University of Wisconsin rose to 10th in the ranks of public institutions in the U.S. News World Report’s 2012 edition of America’s Best Colleges.
The university tied for 10th place along with the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of Washington, according to the U.S. News website. The website also listed UW as 42nd in national doctoral universities.
This is up from the 2011 edition of the U.S. News World Report, where UW was ranked 13th among public institutions and 45th in national doctoral universities.
UW Provost Paul DeLuca said the rankings will help impact prospective students’ decisions to attend the university.
“These kinds of reports are really of great value to students and families when they’re trying to make college decisions,” DeLuca said.
However, DeLuca also said he did not think the report should not be regarded as a completely accurate measure of a school.
“Would I say I believe the report is of high precision? No. Quite frankly, I think it underestimates the quality of big institutions because it’s driven by so much reputational activities,” DeLuca said.
DeLuca also said that while the UW’s reputation worldwide is spectacular, the majority of people recognizing this are mostly undergraduate students in the Midwest – and that this may have affected the school’s standing.
The Best Colleges list is based on up to 16 different measures of quality, according to the U.S. News World Report’s website. These measurements fall into seven categories for the national university survey: peer assessment, graduation and retention rate, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni donations, graduation rate performance and high school counselor reputation rankings.
The rankings system also uses two different types of measures, according to the website: input and output.
Input measures are specified as “[reflecting] the quality of students, faculty and other resources used in education,” while outcome measures “capture the results of the education an individual receives.”
For colleges studied for the National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges rankings, undergraduate academic reputation (consisting of peer assessment surveys and high school counselor ratings) holds the largest weight at 22.5 percent, according to a table on the website.
The next highest category is tied between faculty resources and graduation and retention rates, at 20 percent each.
“It’s driven very much by interpretation in many cases,” DeLuca said. “Though it also does use facts.”
Deluca also said that part of the rankings takes into account the opinion of faculty members from different universities.
“Even though [UW] did fairly well in the ratings, I think we did better than what we were ranked,” Deluca said.
UW’s engineering and business programs also made their way into the rankings, according to the press release from UW.
Both the engineering and business programs tied for seventh among public doctoral-granting institutions in each respective category.
The website also has UW’s undergraduate chemical engineering program ranked sixth at schools whose highest degree is a doctorate.
The university was also ranked first for grad school rankings for clinical psychology and rehabilitation counseling.
