U.S. News and World Report Ranks Colorado State University Among Nation’s Best Colleges, Recognizes CSU for Making Writing a Priority

Colorado State University ranks in the top tier of the nation’s best universities and is one of the top 20 that makes writing a priority as a critical element of student success, according to the 2012 U.S. News and World Report "America’s Best Colleges" edition released today.

Colorado State ranks No. 63 among public universities on the list of top-tier public and private doctoral universities and 128th overall among public and private institutions. A complete list of rankings and methodologies is available at www.usnews.com.

This latest ranking follows CSU’s recent announcement of record research expenditures. The National Science Foundation has ranked CSU second in the nation for federal research dollars spent among all public universities without a medical school, cementing CSU’s reputation as one of the nation’s best research institutions.

“We’re proud that CSU provides students with an outstanding, competitive education, and our faculty is among the most productive in the country when it comes to research that impacts the quality of life in Colorado and around the world,” said Colorado State President Tony Frank. “Overall, these rankings are a strong indicator of the quality of our state’s system of higher education: The three top research universities are once again included in the top tier despite serious funding challenges.”

U.S. News also highlighted Colorado State as an outstanding example of institutions that encourage “Writing in the Disciplines” – a distinction that helps drive student success, according to the magazine. Also listed among the 17 schools in the category were Brown University, Carleton College, Cornell University, Duke University, Harvard University and Princeton University.

“These colleges typically make writing a priority at all levels of instruction and across the curriculum,” the magazine said. “Students are encouraged to produce and refine various forms of writing for a range of audiences in different disciplines.”

Colorado State is one of the nation’s premier research universities. Over the past six years, research spending at Colorado State has increased 24 percent, even at a time of significant cuts in federal research funding nationwide. For the most recent fiscal year, expenditures rose to $330.8 million from $302.9 million in Fiscal Year 2010. Of that $330.8 million, federal awards-based expenditures increased 9 percent to $236.6 million from $211.7 million the previous year.

In the most recent report from NSF for Fiscal Year 2008-2009, Colorado State ranks second in the nation among public research universities without a medical school.

Highlights of other Colorado State achievements:

– For the second year in a row, the “Education” issue of Popular Science released in September listed the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory in the College of Engineering as one of the 25 Most Awesome College Labs. The lab is the only one listed in Colorado for 2011. In June, Wired magazine singled out the EECL in its listing of Fort Collins as one of “The Emerging Epicenters” for innovation and high-tech job growth in green technology.

– Colorado State ranked among the best schools in the nation in Forbes’ annual ranking of the Top Colleges for 2011, which was released in August. Colorado State ranked 61st among public universities and also made the Forbes Top 100 Best Buy Colleges list, ranking 45th among all private and public universities.

– Colorado State was named as one of the country’s best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review. The education services company features the school in the new 2012 edition of its annual college guide, “The Best 376 Colleges,” which was on newsstands in August.

– The Fiske Guide to Colleges – also released in August – features Colorado State in the 2012 edition. The Fiske Guide features more than 300 of the country’s best and most interesting colleges and universities.

– Colorado State also ranked highly this summer in multiple international rankings issued by such institutions as the QS World University Rankings and the Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

– In June, Diverse Issues In Higher Education listed CSU among the Top 100 Producers of Minority Degrees for 2011. The rankings include institutions that confer the most degrees to minority students.

– In April, Princeton Review named CSU as one of the nation’s top colleges with a strong commitment to sustainability initiatives and activities because of its many green initiatives including a new minor in sustainability, a 5.3-megawatt solar plant and biomass boiler.

– In March, U.S. News and World Report ranked CSU’s veterinary medicine professional doctorate program in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in the top three among programs of its kind throughout the United States. The graduate program in the Department of Occupational Therapy in the College of Applied Human Sciences – a “Program of Excellence” designated by the state of Colorado – ranked 8th in the nation.

– In January, CSU was ranked among the 2011 “100 Best Values in Public Colleges” by Kiplinger’s. Kiplinger’s methodology for determining the best values in public education includes data on more than 500 top public institutions and quality measures such as admission rate, test scores of incoming freshmen and four- and six-year graduation rates. Also part of the ranking is cost data including tuition, fees, room and board and financial aid for in-state and out-of-state students. Institutions listed among the top values are based on a combination of academic quality and affordability.

Other Colorado universities in the top tier of the U.S. News and World Report rankings were the Colorado School of Mines, CU-Boulder, University of Denver and University of Colorado-Denver.

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