This marks the eighth time USC Aiken has been ranked in the top three of public comprehensive colleges in the South by U.S. News & World Report. USC Aiken also was ranked first in the 2002 and 2003 editions.

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

U.S. News & World Report uses six categories of indicators to capture academic quality, including academic reputation/peer assessment (25 percent), retention of students (25 percent), faculty resources (20 percent), student selectivity (15 percent), financial resources (10 percent), and alumni giving (5 percent). The indicators include input measures that reflect a school’s student body, its faculty, and its financial resources and 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 and 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, USC Aiken ranked first with Winston-Salem State University second and Elizabeth City State University ranked third. Both schools are in North Carolina.

The magazine will be on newsstands on August 22. The rankings are also available on the U.S. News & World Report Web site at www.usnews.com.

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