Emory ranked 18th by U.S. News

By Jan Gleason

Emory University maintained its 18-place ranking for the third year in a row among 249 national universities in this year’s U.S. News & World Report annual college quality rankings. The Goizueta Business School maintained it’s 16 spot in the rankings of undergraduate business programs. The business program rankings are based solely on a survey U.S. News conducts of deans and senior faculty at business schools.

“Although we stayed the same as last year and we quibble about the value of these rankings, they recognize the overall quality of Emory as being in the top 20 in the nation and that’s good no matter how you look at it,” said Woody Hunter, interim provost.

Emory’s rankings in the survey’s components were: 4 out of 5 in academic reputation, 19th in student selectivity, sixth in faculty resources, 14th in overall financial resources, 23rd in graduation and retention and 15th in alumni giving.

On the faculty resources rank (20 percent of the final score)–an indicator that is mainly derived from faculty compensation and average classsize–Emory climbed from ninth to sixth. Emory now has a higher score in this area than Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Duke and many other universities.

The national debate over the validity of the U.S. News survey has continued this year with a story in the September issue of The Washington Monthly in which a former U.S. News insider calls for revamping the survey to measure and rank schools according to how much students learn during college.

This year the magazine also released a list of the “Great Schools at Great Prices,” in which universities are ranked based on both net cost of attendance and the school's academic quality. Emory is 25th on this list.

The rankings will appear in the Sept. 10 issue of the magazine and at www.usnews.com.