Northwestern College ranked sixth by U.S. News and World Report

Northwestern College is tied for sixth place among 80 Midwestern regional colleges in U.S. News & World Report’s 2017 Best Colleges guidebook and is the highest ranked Iowa college in its category. This is the 10th year in a row for Northwestern to be in the top 10. The rankings, which include 1,374 schools nationwide, are available at www.usnews.com/colleges.

“We are always pleased when Northwestern’s high-quality education is affirmed by rankings and our peer institutions,” says Greg Christy, Northwestern College’s president. “Our U.S. News ranking and high rankings from Washington Monthly, Forbes, Princeton Review, Money magazine and others add external, data-based validation for the strength of the Northwestern experience to what our graduates and students say. Once again the excellence of Northwestern’s faculty and their commitment to teaching and mentoring students has been affirmed.”

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 is in the top 10 in several of the individual categories, including peer assessment, graduation rate (67 percent), freshmen in the top 25 percent of their high school class (57 percent), and alumni giving rate (20 percent).