Forbes.com online news magazine has rated the University of Mary Washington as the 13th best public college in its inaugural list of “America’s Best Colleges.” Overall, the university ranks 144th out of 569 undergraduate institutions that the magazine considers the nation’s best.
The list is compiled in conjunction the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP), which rates the undergraduate institutions based on the quality of the education provided and how much their students achieve. The CCAP ranks only the top 15 percent of the nation’s more than 4,000 colleges and universities.
Other Virginia schools listed as top public institutions include: University of Virginia (5), College of William and Mary (6), Virginia Military Institute (9) and James Madison University (22).
According to Forbes.com, the list is based on the following factors: rankings from 7 million student evaluations of courses and instructors recorded on the Web site RateMYProfessors.com, the percentage of alumni who are listed among the notable people in “Who’s Who in America,” the percentage of students who graduate in four years, the amount of student debt of graduates who borrowed and the number of students or faculty who have received nationally competitive awards like Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes.
In recent years, the University of Mary Washington has seen its academic reputation garner national recognition in other selective guidebooks, including Fiske Guide to Colleges, the Princeton Review, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Peterson’s Competitive Colleges and Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges.