Air Force Academy Ranked Top College in the West
8/22/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 22, 2008
AIR FORCE ACADEMY - The Air Force Academy was named the best baccalaureate college in the west for the second year in a row Friday and received top rankings in engineering in the U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Colleges 2009 rankings. U.S. News & World Report evaluated 319 universities which offer only undergraduate degrees, and ranked the colleges in four geographic regions: west, north, mid-west and south.
In the west region, the Academy was the hands-down #1 best baccalaureate college. This region includes Texas, Oklahoma, and every state north, south and west of Colorado, including Alaska and Hawaii.
The ranking was based on a wide range of criteria, including student-faculty ratio, percentage of full time faculty, acceptance rate, average class size, and freshman retention rates. At the Air Force Academy, the student-faculty ratio is 8-to-1; 100 percent of the faculty is full-time; acceptance rate is 17 percent; freshman retention rate is 91 percent; average graduation rate is 78 percent; 66 percent of classes here have less than 20 cadets in the classroom; and zero classes have 50 or more cadets.
The Academy also received top rankings in undergraduate engineering. Overall, the Academy's undergraduate engineering programs are tied with Pennsylvania's Bucknell University for the #8 program in the nation this year. The Academy ranked #2 in the nation in aeronautical and astronautical engineering for the eighth consecutive year, behind only Embry Riddle Aeronautical University's main campus. The Academy also tied Massachusetts' Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering for the #8 slot in the nation in Electrical Engineering. And in undergrad management programs, the Academy tied for #52 with a dozen other colleges.
The engineering rankings are produced after examining a weighted combination of factors. These start with peer assessment by university deans and senior faculty (25 percent), and add in graduation and retention rates (25 percent), faculty resources (20 percent), student selectivity (15 percent), financial resources (10 percent), and alumni giving rate.
The engineering program rankings are separated by which universities offer graduate education programs, and those which have only undergraduate degrees, such as the Air Force Academy.
