UMW Claims Strong Showing in Two Sets of National Rankings

The University of Mary Washington took top spots in a pair of prestigious national college rankings, each released this week.

Washington Monthly, which judges schools on their commitment to contributing to the greater good, recognized UMW for providing marketable degrees at affordable prices. The Princeton Review’s college rankings, based on feedback from actual students, placed Mary Washington in the top 14 percent of the nation’s thousands of four-year colleges and universities.

Encouraging college students to be active citizens, Washington Monthly’s 2021 College Rankings cite schools’ ability to promote social mobility, research and service. “We rate schools based on what they do for the country,” states the website for the publication, which included UMW in not one but two categories: Best Master’s Universities and Best Bang for the Buck.

Mary Washington ranked 29th in the nation among the top 276 colleges and universities in the publication’s Best Bang for the Buck Southeast category, which takes into account such factors as graduation rate, net price and loan repayment rate. Among four-year institutions that award “a significant number of master’s degrees but few or no doctoral degrees,” UMW came in 42nd in the nation, earning the second highest distinction in the commonwealth of Virginia.

“The rankings … are crafted to push institutions of higher learning to be engines of upward mobility, scientific progress and democratic participation,” said Paul Glastris, editor-in-chief of Washington Monthly, which has ranked colleges since 2005.

Now in its 30th year, The Princeton Review’s best colleges guide is one of the longest-running and most well-respected publications of its type, delving into admissions, academics, tuition and aid, student body, campus life and careers. Results included in the 2022 edition, The Best 387 Colleges, are based on 154,000 student surveys gauging both on- and off-campus involvement.

The guide quotes students who praise UMW for offering small class sizes, tools to think critically and succeed in the workforce, undergraduate research opportunities, professors who go the extra mile and an advantageous location midway between Richmond and Washington, D.C.

Mary Washington also garnered a spot in The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges: 2021 Edition, which lists environmentally responsible institutions based on school-reported data and student opinion.

“We salute UMW for its outstanding academics,” said The Princeton Review Editor-in-Chief Rob Franek, “and we are genuinely pleased to recommend it to prospective applicants searching for their ‘best-fit’ college.”