NWC ranked seventh by U.S. News

Northwestern College is ranked seventh among 97 Midwestern regional colleges in U.S. News & World Report’s 2013 Best Colleges guidebook. This is the sixth year in a row for Northwestern to be in the top 10 of its category.

The rankings, which include nearly 1,400 schools nationwide, are available at www.usnews.com/colleges. The guidebook will be on newsstands Sept. 18.

“We are pleased to be rated so highly by U.S. News and our peer institutions,” says Greg Christy, Northwestern College’s president. “This ranking is yet another indicator of the quality of our faculty and their commitment to excellence in teaching and mentoring students.”

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 was in the top 10 in several of the individual categories, including peer assessment, average freshman retention rate (78 percent), average graduation rate (63 percent) and freshmen in the top 25 percent of their high school class (52 percent).