This year marks the seventh time USC Aiken has been ranked in the top three. The campus ranked first in the 2002 and 2003 editions.

"We are very pleased to once again celebrate this news. USC Aiken has enjoyed being continuously ranked in the top three since the publication first began ranking our category of institutions seven years ago. USC Aiken also is the only institution to be ranked in the top three for all seven of those years," said Thomas L. Hallman, USC Aiken chancellor. “This is a tribute to the faculty and staff of USC Aiken, to have maintained this reputation for high quality through one of the most difficult financial periods in our history. They remain committed to providing the very best educational experience for all of our students. This is not only great news for the USC Aiken campus community but for our alumni and friends in the Aiken community as well.”

U.S. News & World Report uses six categories of indicators to capture academic quality, including academic reputation/peer assessment (25 percent), retention of students (20 percent), faculty resources (20 percent), student selectivity (15 percent), financial resources (10 percent), graduation rates (5 percent), and alumni giving (5 percent). The indicators include input measures that reflect a school’s student body, its faculty, and its financial resources as well as outcome measures that signal how well the institution does its job of educating students.

The method that U.S. News uses to rank colleges and universities consists of three basic steps. The schools are categorized primarily by mission and, in some cases, region. Then data is gathered 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 each measure matters. Finally, the colleges in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score.

In "Comprehensive Colleges—Bachelor’s Category," U.S. News & World Report includes institutions that emphasize undergraduate education and offer a small number of graduate degrees. In the "Best Comprehensive Colleges in the South" category, Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina was ranked first.

The magazine went on newsstands Aug. 20 containing rankings of more than 1,400 accredited schools. The rankings are also available on the U.S. News & World Report Web site at www.usnews.com.

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