Minnesota Colleges Among Nation's Best in U.S. News & World Report’s 2017 Rankings

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — U.S. News & World Report revealed its 2017 rankings Tuesday of the best colleges in America, and it’s a list that parents and kids will want to pay attention to.

Deciding where to attend college is often the biggest decision Minnesota high school students 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. While U.S. News & World Report ended its print magazine in 2010, it still publishes online and a print version of its college rankings.

This year, two Minnesota schools made the list of top 200 national universities:

71. University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (2016 ranking: 69)

118. The University of St. Thomas (2016 ranking: 115)

The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities was also ranked as the 26th best public college in the nation.

Last year, St. Mary's University of Minnesota was ranked 180, but fell out of the top 200 in the 2017 list.

Several Minnesota schools also placed high in the 2017 list of top national Liberal Arts colleges:

7. Carleton College (2016 ranking: 8)

24. Macalester College (2016 ranking: 23)

53. St. Olaf College (2016 ranking: 51)

77. (Tie) Gustavus Adolphus College (2016 ranking: 79)

77. (Tie) St. John’s University (2016 ranking: 79)

87. College of St. Benedict (2016 ranking: 90)

115. Concordia College–Moorhead (2016 ranking: 120)

See the full rankings here.

So, how are the rankings compiled?

U.S. News uses six 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.

Read the full methodology here.

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.”

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.

That’s all well and good for the best of the best high school students, but what about the rest?

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.”

Marc Torrence contributed to this report.

Image: Ron Cogswell via Flickr /Creative Commons