NWC ranked in top 10 by U.S. News

Northwestern College is ranked ninth among 95 Midwestern regional colleges in the U.S. News Media Group’s 2011 edition of its Best Colleges guidebook. This is the fourth year in a row for Northwestern to be in the top 10 of its category.

The rankings, which include more than 1,400 schools nationwide, are available at www.usnews.com/colleges. They will also be published in the September issue of U.S. News & World Report, on newsstands starting Aug. 31.

“Our consistently high ranking by U.S. News is reflective of the quality of a Northwestern College education, and it reflects positively on the work of many people in all areas of the campus,” says Ron De Jong, Northwestern’s dean of enrollment services. “It’s gratifying that an organization that looks carefully at a number of institutional factors gives this strong endorsement of Northwestern’s academic program.”

The rankings are based on key measures of quality such as academic reputation; retention (freshman retention and graduation rate); faculty resources (including class size, the percentage of faculty with the top academic degree, student-faculty ratio and compensation); student selectivity; financial resources; and alumni giving.

Northwestern, with two members of its faculty having been honored as Iowa Professor of the Year and its computer programming team having competed among the top 100 teams in the world two years in a row, scored high in the U.S. News ranking’s peer assessment. The college tied for seventh in that ranking of academic reputation.

Northwestern was among 10 Midwestern regional colleges named to a new list in the guidebook, “A-Plus Schools for B Students.” That list includes six schools that were rated in the top 10 overall, described by U.S. News as places where non-superstars can thrive.