Forbes.com online news magazine has again rated the University of Mary Washington as the 13th best public college in its second annual listing of “America’s Best Colleges.” The university also ranks 58th in the magazine’s list of “America’s Best Values.” Overall, UMW rates 121st out of 600 undergraduate institutions that the magazine considers the nation’s best.
The list is compiled in conjunction the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP), which rates the undergraduate institutions based on the quality of the education provided and how much their students achieve. The CCAP ranks only the top 15 percent of the nation’s more than 4,000 colleges and universities.
Other Virginia schools listed as top public institutions include: College of William and Mary (4), University of Virginia (6), Virginia Military Institute (10), James Madison University (37) and Virginia Tech (44).
According to Forbes.com, the list is based on the following factors: rankings from 4 million student evaluations of courses and instructors, as recorded on the Web site RateMYProfessors.com, the percentage of alumni who are listed in “Who’s Who in America,” the average salaries of graduates reported by Payscale.com, the percentage of students who graduate in four years, the average student loan debt and the number of students or faculty who have received internationally competitive awards like Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes.
In recent years, the University of Mary Washington has seen its academic reputation
garner national recognition in other selective guidebooks, including Fiske Guide to Colleges, the Princeton Review, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Peterson’s Competitive Colleges and Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges.