Every year, U.S. News and World Report ranks thousands of domestic colleges and universities to help student applicants decide which school is right for them. The rankings separate universities into a range of categories based on price, region, liberal arts or professional, public or private, and financial aid among others.
U.S. News ranked Capital University among the top 40 Midwestern regional universities for the 2017 academic year.
The regional universities category includes those that offer a full range of undergraduate programs and some master’s programs but few doctoral programs, and includes those such as Providence College, Santa Clara University, Elon University and Butler University.
“Capital being in the top 40 means that regionally we are making advances academically and we are a pretty good school,” Kenya Shaheed, sophomore public relations major, said. “This is a good thing because it means that we will have to work to live up to the spot we were ranked as.”
While Capital was ranked 38 overall in the Midwest, the university was also ranked 10th for best value, and 25th best for veterans within the region.
“I think it’s great that Capital’s continuous growth and well respected reputation has received some recognition,” Brian Lanier, junior marketing major, said. “With more recognition hopefully will come more student enrollment as well as the opportunity for Capital to expand it’s campus. I’m excited to a part of Capital and looking forward to seeing how the university will develop down the road.”
Rankings are not everything of course, what maters for many students is the experience, which is not something that is easily quantifiable.
“Knowing that I go to an institution that ranks in the top 40 is great on paper, but being able to experience that is what matters,” Mariegeo Nyamitambo, junior psychology major, said. “At Capital, students are offered a high quality of education and exposed to opportunities that students at many institutions are not awarded.”
The university is reported to have a student-faculty ratio of 12:1, with 56.3 percent of classes having fewer than 20 students, and 98.2 percent of classes having fewer than 50 students.
The U.S. News rankings rest on two pillars: quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality, and the organizations own researched view of what matters in education.
According to their website, “Regional Universities and Regional Colleges are further divided and ranked in four geographical groups: North, South, Midwest and West. Once schools have been divided by category, U.S. News gathers data from each college on up to 15 indicators of academic excellence. Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects U.S. News’ judgment about how much that measure matters. Finally, the colleges and universities in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score.”
For more information on Capital’s rankings in the state and among others in the country, visit usnews.com/education.
