Contact: Käri Knutson, 608-265-9870, knutson4@wisc.edu
Madison – The University of Wisconsin-Madison is 10th among public institutions in U.S. News & World Report’s latest college rankings.
Overall, UW-Madison ranks 44th in a six-way tie. Last year, UW-Madison ranked 11th among publics and 41st overall in a six-way tie. The rankings, released today, include more than 310 national doctoral universities and will be included in the 2017 edition of America’s Best Colleges.
“We know that UW-Madison provides a quality education and experience for our students,” says Provost Sarah Mangelsdorf. “While rankings are only one measure of a university’s performance, we realize many students and families pay close attention to them in helping make decisions about college.”
The methodology used to produce the rankings is almost identical to last year’s, with a slight change in how the class size portion of the ranking is calculated. Criteria used include retention/graduation rates, academic reputation, financial resources, faculty resources and student selectivity.
One area UW-Madison scored highly in was “A Strong Commitment to Undergraduate Teaching,” ranking 14th overall and tying for fifth public. This is the first year UW-Madison is included in this list, which was created in 2014.
The report also evaluated undergraduate engineering and business programs. For the third year in a row, the College of Engineering ranks 14th overall, and for the fourth year in a row, it ranks seventh among public doctoral institutions.
The undergraduate program at the Wisconsin School of Business is ranked 19th overall in a four-way tie and is ninth among public doctoral institutions. The insurance/risk management program is ranked fifth overall and third among public universities, while the real estate program is ranked first among public institutions for the fourth year in a row, and second overall for the third year in a row.
The engineering and business school rankings are based solely on the judgments of business deans and senior faculty who responded to an invitation to nominate peer institutions on a scale of one to five.
UW-Madison has performed well in other recent rankings including:
– QS World University Rankings: Ranked 53rd, up from 54th last year. Criteria for the ranking included academic reputation, faculty-student ratio, citations per faculty, employer reputation, proportion of international students and proportion of international faculty.
– Washington Monthly: Ranked 28th, based on three criteria: research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and Ph.D.s), social mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students) and service (encouraging students to give something back to their country).
