Eastern Mennonite University was named among the top 25 percent of regional universities in the South by U.S. News and World Report in rankings released last week and was noticed for the second consecutive year with a similar ranking by The Wall Street Journal / Times Higher Education.
In the USNWR rankings, EMU tied for 31st out of 134 universities in the South. Regional universities are defined as offering a broad scope of undergraduate degrees and some graduate programs, but few, if any, doctoral programs.
USNWR also awarded EMU two more rankings:
- For Best Value, which combines a school’s academic quality, as indicated by its 2021 U.S. News Best Colleges ranking, and the 2019-2020 net cost of attendance for a student who received the average level of need-based financial aid.
- For Social Mobility, by enrolling and graduating large proportions of disadvantaged students awarded with Pell Grants. The vast majority of these federal grants are awarded to students whose adjusted gross family incomes are under $50,000.
The USNWR ranking, in its 36th year, assesses 1,452 U.S. bachelor’s degree-granting institutions on 17 measures of academic quality.
TWSJ/THE rankings, just four years old, ranked EMU among the top 33 percent of universities in the South and in the top 40 percent of universities nationally. Their methodology evaluates more than 790 colleges and universities on their educational impact and the lifetime benefit to students.
The ranking includes the results of the THE US Student Survey, which examines a range of key issues including students’ engagement with their studies, their interaction with their teachers and their satisfaction with their experience. The ranking adopts a scorecard approach, with 15 individual performance indicators combining to create an overall score that reflects the broad strength of the institution, according to their website.
“Rankings don’t always capture what we know our alumni value about their experience here at EMU — relationships with our professors, unique experiences in and out of the classroom, and the emphasis on learning to live and lead together in community,” said Scott Barge, vice president for institutional research. “Still, we value this recognition and know others in our community do as well.”
Here’s a few other rankings in recent years:
- Best Colleges – US News and World Report, 2020
- Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education, 2020 College rankings
- Money’s Best Colleges 2019
- Forbes Best ROI University (Grateful Grads Index, 2018)
- The Princeton Review- top 50 guide to green schools, 2018
- Sierra Club- Cool Schools, 2019
- Marks of Distinction, 2018