For the third year in a row, Eastern Connecticut State University is ranked in the top 30 public universities in the North Region in U.S. News and World Report’s 2013 edition of Best Colleges. Eastern was the highest ranked university among the four Connecticut state universities. Again, Eastern was in the top 100 regional universities — both public and private — in the region.
Regional universities such as Eastern are ranked on the basis of criteria that include peer assessment, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving. The North Region includes colleges and universities from New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.
“On behalf of the entire Eastern campus community, I am honored to learn that Eastern Connecticut State University is again ranked in the top 30 public regional universities in the North by U.S. News and World Report,” said Eastern President Elsa Núñez.
“We are honored to be a Tier One institution with a public mission to provide an outstanding liberal arts education to students from all walks of life. Today’s news is a tribute to our entire campus community. To continue to be ranked this highly in the U.S. News ratings is a sign of an improved academic reputation and the quality of our faculty and educational programs. We are also working hard to give Eastern students more opportunities to apply their classroom learning in such experiences as internships, paid co-ops, service learning, undergraduate research and other applied settings. This is a great day for our faculty, staff, students and alumni.”
This year’s U.S. News and World Report rankings included reviews of 1,391 schools nationwide and are available at www.usnews.com/colleges. They will also be published in the Best Colleges 2013 Guidebook, published by U.S. News & World Report and available on newsstands starting Sept. 18.
Over the past two decades, the U.S. News and World Report rankings, which group colleges based on categories created by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, have grown to be the most comprehensive research tool for students and parents considering higher education opportunities.
The 2013 Best Colleges program provides the most thorough examination of 1,391 accredited four-year schools, compared on a set of 16 widely accepted indicators of excellence.
Eastern Connecticut State University is the state’s public liberal arts university and serves more than 5,400 students each year on its Willimantic campus and satellite locations.