Dartmouth held on to its seventh-place rank for the second year in a row in U.S. News & World Report magazine's annual survey of national universities.
The rankings appeared in the magazine's "America's Best Colleges" issue, which came out earlier this month. Dartmouth was also named the number one "jock school" in "The 310 Best Colleges" and fared well in the U.S. News category for "best value -- discount price."
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg said he is "proud and pleased" to see the College ranked number seven.
U.S. News ranked Yale University as the best national university followed by Princeton University and Harvard University. Harvard had held the number-one spot for several years before being overtaken. Yale and Princeton tied for second place last year.
Duke University moved up from sixth to fourth place, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology retained its fifth-place ranking from last year and Stanford University moved down two spots to sixth place.
Brown University, the California Institute of Technology and Northwestern University rounded out the top 10.
In its rankings of national liberal arts colleges, U.S. News ranked Swarthmore College number one, up from second place last year. Amherst and Williams Colleges were second and third, respectively.
U.S. News rankings take into account selectivity, faculty and financial resources, retention rate, alumni giving, student to faculty ratio, class sizes and graduation rates.
Furstenberg said all the schools that ranked above Dartmouth are larger and have more resources.
Furstenberg said he thinks Dartmouth should be ranked higher, but "the difference between number one and seven is small."
"In terms of admissions results we are more attractive than some of the schools above us," Furstenberg added.
Last year's U.S. News best colleges issue included a "commitment to undergraduate education" category. It ranked Dartmouth number one. This category did not appear in this year's issue.
Bob Morse, U.S. News's research director, said the methodology for computing the overall rankings of schools changed this year.
He said there is no specific reason why the teaching category was eliminated. "We just decided not to do it again this year," he said.
"We're also trying to find a better methodology to use, and until we find a more sophisticated method, we probably won't do it again," Morse said.
Furstenberg said U.S. News shuffles its contents every year and the teaching category was a "one-time deal."
He said it is to Dartmouth's benefit that the category only appeared one year. "Now Dartmouth can claim it is number one until they do it again," Furstenberg said.
Other changes to the methodology included eliminating laboratory classes in class-size calculations and only using main lecture courses to determine class size, Morse said.
He said another new category was added to assess "the value added by colleges in the process of educating students." It compared predicted graduation rates, which were based on test scores and the money the college expends per student, to actual graduation rates.
Another section of the U.S. News rankings evaluates college costs.
There are two categories in the "best value" section of its rankings. One compares the sticker price of a college to its quality while the other compares a discounted tuition that factors in financial aid to the school's quality.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ranked number one for sticker price value and Cal Tech came in first for discount price value.
Dartmouth was fifth in the discount price value category.
Money Magazine also publishes an annual list of top college buys. This year the California Institute of Technology ranked highest.
Dartmouth was ranked in the top 150 overall and was ranked as the 13th best-value school for schools with tuition over $18,000. Dartmouth also came in 17th for best value in the Northeast.
In The Princeton Review's "The Best 310 Colleges," Dartmouth was rated as the number one "jock school."
Rankings for the Princeton Review guide were based on surveys completed by 56,000 college students from around the country.
Other schools ranked first in the Princeton Review guide categories were Deep Springs College for best campus food, Washington and Lee University as number one "fraternity and sorority school", the University of Missouri at Columbia for unhappiest students, and Florida State University as the number one "party school".
