For the third consecutive year, Case Western Reserve placed 37th among national universities in U.S. News & World Report’s annual “Best Colleges” rankings announced today.
The institution held the same position despite improving its overall score by two points and making gains in several key measures.
“In an ever-more rapidly changing world, it is not enough just to improve,” President Barbara R. Snyder said, while acknowledging that the rankings are imperfect measures. “We need to do more to accelerate progress.”
The Weatherhead School of Management’s undergraduate program, however, climbed from 38th to 31st this year by virtue of a one-tenth of a point improvement in its average rating among business school deans and senior faculty.
The overall university ranking includes peer ratings, as well as more than a dozen quantitative measures. Continuing ongoing trends, Case Western Reserve again improved its selectivity—this time by one percentage point, which was enough to move its ranking in that category to 29th nationwide. Since 2008, the university has cut selectivity by 40 percentage points, and improved its ranking by 19 positions. The university also improved a point on its ACT measure, and stayed even at 71 percent for the proportion of students in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating classes. All of the admissions data is drawn from the class that entered in 2016.
In addition, the university improved its graduation rate by 1 point, to 82 percent, a figure that placed it 60th among national universities. The first-to-second year retention rate stayed at 93 percent for the fourth straight year. Its peer rating—that is, assessments by presidents, provosts and deans of admissions—climbed one-tenth of a point on a five-point scale, to 3.7, although it fell the same amount in high school counselors’ ratings, to 4.2. Other declines included alumni giving, which fell two percentage points to 19, which dropped the ranking among national universities from 36th to 41st. The university’s ranking for financial resources—derived from per-student spending on instruction, research, student services and related educational expenses—fell 9 slots, to 41st.
In addition, the ranking for the university’s undergraduate engineering dipped three slots, to 40th.
To see the full list of U.S. News best national universities, visit usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities.