September 12, 2012

UCSB Ranked Among the Country's Top 10 Public Universities by U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News & World Report has ranked UC Santa Barbara number 10 in its annual listing of the "Top 30 Public National Universities" in the country, and number 41 on its list of the "Best National Universities."

Private institutions usually dominate the "Best National Universities" list, with Harvard, Princeton, and Yale again taking the top three spots. The highest-ranked public institution is UC Berkeley at number 21. At number 41, UCSB moved up from last year's rankings. It is tied with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Of the "Top 30 Public National Universities," UCSB is ranked number 10, tied again with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The undergraduate program in UCSB's College of Engineering is ranked number 39 on the U.S. News & World Report list of "Best Programs at Engineering Schools Whose Highest Degree is a Doctorate." The UCSB College of Engineering is tied at 39 with Brown University, Iowa State University, Lehigh University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Among engineering schools at public universities, only 18 are ranked higher than UCSB's College of Engineering. Last year, that number was 21.

The magazine has just released its annual college rankings online at USNews.com. The 2013 "America's Best Colleges" guidebook goes on sale Tuesday, September 18.

To rank colleges and universities, 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.

U.S. News collects data directly from colleges and universities, as well as from other sources. This year, the magazine reported that 92 percent of the 1,391 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 www.usnews.com/colleges.

About UC Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara is a leading research institution that also provides a comprehensive liberal arts learning experience. Our academic community of faculty, students, and staff is characterized by a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration that is responsive to the needs of our multicultural and global society. All of this takes place within a living and learning environment like no other, as we draw inspiration from the beauty and resources of our extraordinary location at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.