U.S. News & World Report released its annual Best Colleges rankings on Sunday, listing Auburn University as the 47th-best public school in the country.
U.S. News uses data from colleges and universities around the country to measure several factors, which it says “only pertain to measures reflecting academic quality and graduate outcomes,” such as campus culture, financial aid and the reputation of specific programs.
According to the methodology report, U.S. News altered the weight of particular metrics from last year’s report by increasing “emphasis on how often schools' students from all socioeconomic backgrounds earned degrees.”
For instance, first-generation graduation rates were not taken into consideration in previous reports but count toward the most recent report. Meanwhile, U.S. News no longer weighs graduate debt proportion borrowing or high school class standing.
According to the report, Auburn’s in-state tuition and fees total $12,536 per semester, and its undergraduate enrollment equals 25,379.
Though Auburn was in the top 50 public schools, Auburn ranked 93rd when private schools were included. Its undergraduate engineering program also ranked 53rd, tied with six other programs, and it was ranked the 61st best college for veterans, tied with Baylor University, Loyola Marymount University and the University of Iowa.
Meanwhile, the University of Alabama ranked 170th in the nation and 91st among just public schools. The University of Alabama Birmingham ranked 142nd in the national and 76th among just public schools.
U.S. News ranked Princeton the best college overall, followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, Stanford and Yale. University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) won best public school in the country, followed by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina (UNC) and the University of Virginia.
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