Illinois Schools Make U.S. News & World Report's Best Colleges List

U.S. News & World Report revealed its 2017 rankings Tuesday of the best colleges in America, and several Illinois schools were ranked among the top 250.

Deciding where to attend college is often the biggest decision a high school student will have to make, and it’s one that is typically just as nerve-wracking for the parents.

The process of college-hunting can lead to information overload, but U.S. News’ rankings are considered an important resource for many. The news organization spends months compiling data from hundreds of schools around the country.

The 2017 version of the college rankings were released Tuesday.

Typically, the prestigious Ivy League schools have a stronghold on the top of U.S. News’s lists. Last year, for instance, Princeton University, Harvard University and Yale University took the first three slots on the national rankings.

But this year, it was the University of Chicago cracking that club, taking in the No. 3 ranking in the list of best universities in the country. Princeton (No. 1), Harvard (2), Yale (4) and Columbia University in New York (5) joined the U of C in the top five.

Other Illinois schools listed under “Best National Universities” are Northwestern (No. 12), The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (44), Loyola (99), The Illinois Institute of Technology (103), DePaul (124), Illinois State (152), The University of Illinois-Chicago (152), Northern Illinois (214) and Benedictine (220).

The rankings were based on a points system, with several schools in the 100s range finishing tied with each other.

In a separate list of the best National Liberal Arts Colleges, Wheaton College was tops in Illinois at No. 62.

So, how are the rankings compiled?

U.S. News Chief Data Strategist Robert Morse told Patch that the publication considers objective factors such as graduation and retention rates.

“College is expensive,” Morse told Patch in an email. “In addition to considering factors like location, cost, course offerings and activities, families should pay close attention to graduation and retention rates.

“These are important indicators of how well a school supports its students academically and financially. The Best Colleges rankings measure academic excellence, and we believe that students and their families should strongly consider academic quality when choosing a college.”

The rankings are broken out by state and by category. Students and parents can also look at the publication’s rankings of best value schools and best public schools and the best schools by discipline such as engineering and business.

They can also drill down and see how specific schools perform across several metrics.

“U.S. News believes that the more information that is available to students, the better,” Morse told Patch. “Rankings, done right, are a useful source of information for students. U.S. News rankings focus specifically on assessing academic quality of schools. If academic quality is a top priority, our rankings are an ideal place to start.”

U.S. News uses five categories of data that are all weighted differently.

• Outcomes (30 percent): Hard student performance data such as retention, graduation rate performance and graduation rate.
• Expert opinion (22.5 percent): More subjective data that includes opinions of presidents, provosts, high school counselors and admissions deans.
• Faculty resources (20 percent): Class size, student-to-faculty ratio, proportion of full-time faculty, proportion of professors with the highest degrees in their field and faculty salary.
• Student excellence (12.5 percent): How incoming students are performing on measures such as ACT/SAT scores, proportion of first-year students in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class and acceptance rate.
• Financial resources (10 percent): How much money the school spends on things such as instruction, research and student services. (Spending on dorms, food and sports don’t count.)
• Alumni giving (5 percent): What percentage of living alumni with a bachelor’s degree have given to their school that year.

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