Midd Racks Up the Rankings
It’s that time of the year again. The leaves are changing, there’s apple cider in Proctor, classes are getting stressful, and your news feed is getting crammed with links to higher education articles ranking Middlebury against other higher education institutions. Now we all know that Midd’s a great school, but it doesn’t hurt to feed our own egos just once a year (and send those links to relatives at home who think you go to a community college). So here’s how Middlebury has faired so far in the rankings:
- #4 Overall ranking amongst national liberal arts schools. (up from #5 last year.)
- #13 High school counselor rankings. (Survey results from nationwide sampling of high school counselors in Spring 2011 and 2012)
- #22 Best value school. (Takes into account a school’s academic quality, as indicated by its overall ranking, and the 2011-2012 net cost of attendance for a student who receives the average level of need-based financial aid. The higher the quality of the program and the lower the cost, the better the deal.)
- Recognized as a liberal arts school with a high percentage of international students (10%).
- #42 Overall ranking amongst American undergraduate schools (universities and liberal arts colleges).
- #10 Most rigorous school. (Based on selectivity, workload as reported by CollegeProwler survey, and student-to-faculty ratio).
- #16 Most stressful school. (Considered the total price of attendance, the percentage of students receiving financial aid, as well as the average amount of financial aid, the selectivity based on the average SAT or ACT score and the percent of applicants admitted—each weighted 20 percent. Each campus’s on- and off-campus crime record for the last three years, according to U.S. Dept. of Education, was factored in as a bonus percentage).
- #11 Best Colleges for Food. (Based on several sources — college dining services awards, college lists like the Princeton Review, news stories, and the site’s own interviews. Focus was not only on the actual food, but schools’ dining programs as a whole.)
This month The Chronicle of Higher Education also released an interactive graphic which visually represents “comparison groups,” lists of peer institutions that universities submit to the U.S. Department of Education for comparison. Among the universities that consider Middlebury its “peer” were the usual suspects of the NESCAC schools as well as the University of Phoenix, Jersey City - a for-profit undergraduate school with a graduation rate of 9%… (who also listed Harvard and Yale as their peers, so we’re in good company?)
Update 10/15: Middlebury was also just recently featured in the Huffington Post for earning #7 in “Professor’s Get High Marks” by the Princeton Review.
