Dartmouth has maintained the No. 11 slot among national universities in the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings, but tops a new category prioritizing a commitment to undergraduate education among national universities.
Princeton University and Harvard University share the top spot in the rankings. Yale University follows at No. 3, while California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania are all tied in the No. 4 slot. Columbia University and the University of Chicago are also tied at No. 8 and Duke University holds the No. 10 spot.
Dartmouth tops the category of national universities with a focus on undergraduates, ahead of Princeton and Yale, which claim the No. 2 and 3 spots, respectively. The category identifies schools which where "singled out most often when experts were asked to identify schools where the faculty has an unusual commitment to undergraduate teaching," according to the report. Other schools cited in the category include Brown University and Stanford University.
Dartmouth also ranked fourth on the list of economic diversity and seventh on the list of "Great Schools, Great Prices" among national universities.
Dartmouth, which is sixth among Ivy League schools on the overall list of national universities ahead of Cornell University and Brown received an overall score of 89, compared to Harvard and Princeton's scores of 100. Dartmouth ranked ninth in graduation and retention rate and scored a 4.3 out of 5 on the peer assessment component the lowest among Ivy League schools.
The peer assessment is based on surveys filled out by presidents, provosts and deans of admissions at other universities, according to the U.S. News web site. The peer assessment accounts for 25 percent of a university's ranking, compared to 20 percent for retention, 20 percent for faculty resources, 15 percent for student selectivity, 10 percent for financial resources and 5 percent each for graduation rate performance and alumni giving rate.
"With the improvements we have made in many other areas, Dartmouth could see a noticeable increase in our overall ranking if our Peer Assessment Score a single factor with greatest weight was higher," Dartmouth's Office of Institutional Research wrote in an analysis of the rankings released by the College's Office of Public Affairs on Wednesday evening.
In an article published on Wednesday, Inside Higher Ed questioned the weight given to the peer assessment survey in the rankings, noting that the results on these peer reviews may well be skewed. For example, Inside Higher Ed reported, the provost at the University of Wisconsin at Madison gave only his own university and the New School the top ranking of "distinguished" on last year's peer review, while ranking all but one other school "adequate," the second-lowest ranking.
In June, an official at Clemson University admitted that the administrators at Clemson filling out the survey purposefully ranked other universities lower to help boost the university's ranking, Inside Higher Ed reported.
The full rankings were to be released online and on newsstands on Thursday morning, but several news outlets reported having purchased copies at newsstands on Wednesday. The Dartmouth purchased a copy of the report on Wednesday at the Dartmouth Bookstore.
Earlier this month, Forbes Magazine ranked Dartmouth 98th in its 2009 "America's Best Colleges" poll, up 29 spots from 2008.
Dartmouth students and administrators have criticized Forbes' methodology, noting specifically that 25 percent of the rankings are based on student evaluations on RateMyProfessor.com, a web site not frequently used by Dartmouth students, The Dartmouth previously reported.
Roland Adams, director of media relations at the College, told The Dartmouth in an e-mail at the time that "Dartmouth continues to have concerns about the [Forbes] methodology, as others may too."
