The Best Colleges in Wisconsin, According to U.S. News & World Report

When choosing the right college for your student, a campus tour, review of course offerings and financial aid package are all essential to picking the one that is the best fit. College rankings may also play a role in the decision-making process; and in its 2018 rankings, U.S. News & World Report shows that Wisconsin has some of the better universities in the U.S. - especially when it comes to a strong commitment to teaching undergraduate students.

Marquette University was ranked 90th, Edgewood College was ranked 181st and Cardinal Strich University was ranked among the top 300.

Top 5 national universities in the country:
Princeton University (1)
Harvard University (2)
University of Chicago (3)
Yale University (3)
Columbia University (5)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (5)
Stanford University (5)

There were several other rankings that U.S. News released Tuesday, including best liberal arts colleges, best public liberal arts colleges and best public universities.

The best national liberal arts college was Williams College in Massachusetts — its 15th year in the top spot —followed in second place by another Massachusetts school, Amherst College.

Top 5 national liberal arts colleges:
Williams College (1)
Amherst College (2)
Bowdoin College (3)
Swarthmore College (3)
Wellesley College (3)

When it comes to Liberal Arts colleges, Wisconsin is home to a fine 6-pack, including Lawrence University (58), Beloit College (76), Ripon College (117), St. Norbert College (134), Carthage College (163) and Northland College in the top 300.

To see how the teaching competition stacks up, U.S. News asked the academic experts a separate question on their spring 2017 annual Best Colleges peer assessment survey for the 2018 U.S. News Best Colleges rankings to also identify schools where the faculty has an unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching. Beloit College (20), and Lawrence University (27) earned high marks among National Liberal Arts colleges. Alverno College (3) earned high marks among regional universities.

In its rankings, U.S. News also took a look at student debt, and it turns out that 70 percent of students who graduate from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., graduate with debt — the average amount of debt being $46,779 — the highest among national universities.

For national liberal arts colleges, that number is highest among graduates of St. John’s University in Minnesota, where 66 percent of students graduate with debt with an average amount of debt of $40,272. Students from Princeton, it turns out, graduate with the least amount of debt among national universities, as do students of Berea College in Kentucky when it comes to national liberal arts colleges.

U.S. News relies on various factors in determining the rankings, with retention, graduate rate performance and graduation rate accounting for 30 percent of the rankings.

“Graduation rate performance measures how well schools are graduating their students based on our predictions, which consider spending, test scores and the proportion of students receiving Pell Grants,” U.S. News explains.

Faculty resources account for 20 percent of the rankings — things like class size, student-to-faculty ratio — and financial resources — average spending on things that go directly toward educating undergraduates — accounts for 10 percent of the rankings. The rest of the rankings are based on expert opinion, student excellence and alumni giving.

U.S. News notes that the top national and top national liberal arts universities have significantly higher graduation and freshman retention rates than other schools. That’s a six-year graduation rate of 96 percent for the top 10 national universities and 92.5 percent for top 10 national liberal arts colleges, whereas that same figure for all numerically ranked national universities is 71.7 percent and 75.7 percent for national liberal arts colleges.

Similarly, the freshman retention rate for top 10 national universities is 98.3 percent and 96.5 percent for top 10 national liberal arts colleges, compared to 87.2 percent for all numerically ranked national universities and 85.7 percent for all numerically ranked national liberal arts colleges, respectfully.

By Feroze Dhanoa and Elizabeth Janney

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