Yale, Swarthmore Ranked No. 1 by News Magazine

Yale University and Swarthmore College were named America’s best undergraduate schools for the second straight year, according to U.S. News and World Report rankings released Thursday.

Yale was tabbed as best national university in the third annual assessment by the magazine, followed by Princeton, Harvard, Caltech, Duke and Stanford. Swarthmore won honors as best national liberal arts college, ahead of Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Bryn Mawr and Wellesley.

Interestingly, the top schools were the alma maters of the 1988 presidential candidates--George Bush graduated from Yale and Michael Dukakis received his undergraduate degree from Swarthmore.

In new categories, Harvey Mudd College, which along with Pomona College is part of the Claremont Colleges, was tabbed as the best school specializing in engineering and Babson College in Massachusetts won honors as the best business speciality school.

UC System

In the national university category, the UC system did well. UC Berkeley was ranked 13th and UCLA 16th. Plus, UC San Diego was included in a list of “up-and-coming� schools selected by college presidents and administrators, along with Arizona State, Carnegie-Mellon, Emory, Rutgers and the University of Arizona.

San Diego State was named as one of the rising regional colleges and universities in the West, as were University of Nevada at Las Vegas and Western Washington University.

The schools were ranked on the basis of five categories: quality of student body--based on SAT scores and the ratio of students accepted to total applicants, faculty quality, academic reputation, financial resources and ability to retain and graduate students.

The magazine said it used statistical measures for each category except academic reputation, which was determined by polling college presidents, deans of academic affairs and deans of admissions.

Regional Colleges

The best regional university or college in the West was Trinity in Texas, the poll said, followed by University of Redlands, Santa Clara University, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, University of San Diego, San Francisco State, Whittier College, University of Puget Sound, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, University of the Pacific in Stockton, University of Portland, Humboldt State, Cal State Fresno, Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash., and Cal State Sacramento.

Topping the list for best regional liberal arts colleges were Southwestern University in Texas, Evergreen State College in Washington, Pacific University in Oregon, Mt. St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles and Texas Lutheran College.

Among the 204 national universities, Yale won top honors even though it did not finish first in any of the five specific categories.

Harvard came in first for academic reputation and student selectivity, while Brown won top honors for student retention, Caltech for faculty quality and Princeton for financial resources.

THE TOP 25

U.S. News & World Report ranked the schools based on quality of student body and faculty, financial resources, ability to retain and to graduate students and reputation for academic excellence. Statistical measures and a survey of college leaders were used in determining the rankings. RANK AND SCHOOL 1. Yale Univ. (Conn.) 2. Princeton Univ. (N.J.) 3. Harvard, Radcliffe (Mass.) 4. California Inst. of Tech. 5. Duke Univ. (N.C.) 6. Stanford Univ. 7. Mass. Inst. of Tech. 8. Dartmouth College (N.H.) 9. Univ. of Chicago (Ill.) 10. Rice Univ. (Tex.) 11. Cornell Univ. (N.Y.) 11. (tie) Columbia Univ. (N.Y.) 13. UC Berkeley 14. Johns Hopkins Univ. (Md.) 15. Brown Univ. (R.I.) 16. UCLA 17. Univ. of Michigan 18. Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 19. Northwestern Univ. (Ill.) 20. Univ. of Pennsylvania 21. Univ. of Virginia 22. Washington Univ. (Mo.) 23. Univ. of Notre Dame (Ind.) 24. Vanderbilt Univ. (Tenn.) 25. Georgetown Univ. (D.C.)