The fourth week of August was good to Boston College in the mass media. In an August 21 article, Newsweek magazine named the University to a list of “25 New Ivies.” A few days later, U.S. News & World Report released its annual college survey and placed BC at Number 34 among 248 national universities—the highest ranking of the University in the 23 years that the magazine has published its ratings.

Illustration: Eamonn Bonner

The Newsweek list, which also appears in the 2007 Kaplan/Newsweek How to Get into College Guide, highlights public and private institutions “whose first-rate academic programs, combined with a population boom in top students, have fueled their rise in stature and favor among the nation’s top students, administrators and faculty—edging them to a competitive status rivaling the Ivy League.” Joining BC on the New Ivies list were such schools as Emory University, the University of Notre Dame, Rice University, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Michigan, and the University of Virginia. Selections were based on admissions statistics and interviews with administrators, faculty, students, and alumni. Boston College was singled out by the magazine for its 39 percent increase in applications over the last five years, its academic quality, and its students’ high level of participation in extracurricular activities.

In the U.S. News assessment, BC shared its 34th position with New York University, the University of Rochester, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The journal also rated BC’s Carroll School at 29th among undergraduate business schools, and ranked the University at 41st in its “Great Schools, Great Prices” section, a list of top universities offering the best value, according to measures of academic quality and net cost to a student who receives the average level of need-based financial aid.

According to data supplied by U.S. News, BC made gains this year in peer assessment, determined through surveys of senior academic, admissions, and administrative officers nationwide; financial resources, measured as expenditure per student on educational programs and services; graduation and retention (BC’s six-year graduation rate rose from 89 to 91 percent); and selectivity, a composite measure of the incoming freshmen’s SAT/ACT scores and class rank and the acceptance rate.

Metrics in which BC lagged were alumni giving, which remained steady at 25 percent but was surpassed this year by other schools; and faculty resources, a calibration that includes the percentage of classes with fewer than 20 students (38 percent), the student-faculty ratio (13 to one), and faculty compensation rates.

Cara Feinberg

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