UCSB Ranked Among the Country’s Top Public Universities by U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News & World Report has once again included UC Santa Barbara in its annual listing of the “Top 30 Public National Universities” in the country, as well on its list of the “Best National Universities.”

UCSB –– which this year experienced the most selective admissions process in campus history –– was ranked number 11 among the “Top 30 Public National Universities.” It shares the spot with the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among national universities, including both public and private institutions, UCSB maintained its ranking at number 41. The campus tied with Boston University, Lehigh University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In addition, the undergraduate program in UCSB’s College of Engineering jumped four spots, to number 35 on the U.S. News & World Report list of “Best Programs at Engineering Schools Whose Highest Degree is a Doctorate.” Among engineering schools at public universities, UCSB’s College of Engineering placed at number 20, up a notch from last year’s rankings. UCSB is tied with Brown University, Case Western Reserve University, Iowa State University, Lehigh University, University of Florida, University of Virginia, and Vanderbilt.

The magazine has just released its annual college rankings online at USNews.com. The 2014 “America’s Best Colleges” guidebook goes on sale Tuesday, September 24.

To rank colleges and universities for the Best Colleges 2014 guidebook, U.S. News & World Report assigns institutions to categories developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. UCSB’s category of national universities includes only institutions that emphasize faculty research and offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master’s degree and doctoral programs.

Among prospective freshman and undergraduate transfer students, UCSB continues to attract the best of the best. The academic qualifications and the diversity of the applicants accepted by UCSB remain exceptionally high. For the 2013-14 academic year, the average high school grade-point average of applicants admitted is 4.13, and the average total score achieved on the required SATR Test is 1944 out of a possible 2400.

Of the enrolling freshmen class, 29 percent are members of underrepresented minority groups (African-American, American Indian, and Chicano and Latino students), and nearly 40 percent are first generation college students.

The rankings in the Best Colleges 2014 guidebook are based on data U.S. News & World Report collects directly from colleges and universities, as well as from other sources. This year, the magazine reported that 91 percent of the 1,376 colleges and universities it surveyed responded to its request for statistical information. Additional data was obtained from the American Association of University Professors, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Council for Aid to Education, and the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. The magazine evaluates and analyzes data on various indicators of academic quality and assigns a weight to each factor based on its relative importance. It then tabulates composite scores and ranks institutions against others in the same peer group.

Complete U.S. News & World report rankings are available at http://www.usnews.com/colleges.