Private institutions usually dominate the "Best National Universities" list, with Harvard, Princeton, and Yale taking the top three spots this year. The highest-ranked public institution is UC Berkeley, at 21st. UC Santa Barbara is tied at 42nd with UC Davis, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institution of New York and the University of Washington.
| Best National Universities: How UC schools ranked Berkeley 21 UCLA 24 San Diego 35 Davis 42 Santa Barbara 42 Irvine 46 Santa Cruz 71 Riverside 96 |
In addition, the undergraduate program in UC Santa Barbara's College of Engineering is ranked 34th on the U.S. News & World Report list of "Best Programs at Engineering Schools Whose Highest Degree is a Doctorate."
The magazine has just released its annual college rankings online at USNews.com. Highlights of the college rankings will be published in the September 2009 issue of U.S. News & World Report, available on newsstands Aug. 24. The 2010 "America's Best Colleges" guidebook goes on sale Aug. 25.
To rank colleges and universities, U.S. News & World Report assigns institutions to categories developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. UC Santa Barbara's category, national universities, includes only institutions that emphasize faculty research and offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's degree and Ph.D. programs.
U.S. News collects data directly from colleges and universities as well as from other sources. This year, the magazine reported that 91.2 percent of the 1,477 colleges and universities it surveyed responded to its request for statistical information. 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.
UC Santa Barbara's rank among public universities was one place higher than last year, and its rank on the list of all national universities was two places higher.