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[08/09] Auburn moves up, ranks among Top 50 public universities for 17th consecutive year in U.S. News survey

Auburn University is ranked 39th among public universities nationwide, according to an annual survey released by U.S. News & World Report today. The ranking marks the 17th consecutive year the magazine has ranked Auburn among the nation's top 50 public universities.

Auburn ranked 20th among land-grant institutions and 88th in the nation among both public and private schools.

The undergraduate program of Auburn's Samuel Ginn College of Engineering is ranked 64th nationally overall and 36th among public universities that offer doctoral programs in engineering. Rankings of other programs are released at various times during the year by U.S. News & World Report.

"The U.S. News ratings are based on indicators that some prospective college students may value, such as general reputation or selectivity," said Drew Clark, director of Auburn's Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. "But Auburn also uses assessments that provide direct information on equally important indicators of quality, such as how much students are actually learning and what kind of college experience they have."

To establish its rankings U.S. News categorizes colleges and universities primarily by mission and, in some cases, region. The magazine then gathers data from each on up to 15 indicators of academic excellence, assigning each factor a weight that reflects the magazine's judgment about how much each measure matters.

The indicators the magazine staff uses to capture academic quality fall into seven categories: academic reputation among its peers, retention of students, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving, and (for national universities and liberal arts colleges) the graduation rate performance, or the difference between the proportion of students expected to graduate and the proportion who actually do.

The newsstand book, "America's Best Colleges," which contains the U.S. News college rankings, may be ordered from www.usnews.com and will be shipped to bookstores today.

Contact: Deedie Dowdle (334) 844-9999 (dowdldk@auburn.edu), or
Mike Clardy, (334) 844-9999 (clardch@auburn.edu)