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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > August > 10
Monday, August 10, 2009
WSU tops UD in America’s Best Colleges poll — both dissed?
The University of Dayton may well land a Top 25 basketball ranking this coming season, but UD didn’t fare so well in the just-released FORBES’ list of America’s best Colleges.
Dayton was ranked 567th of the 600 colleges in the poll.
Wright State was ahead of UD at 554, as was the University of Cincinnati (538), Ohio State (361), Miami University (331) , Wittenberg (301), Cedarville (284), Xavier (196) and 18 other Ohio colleges and universities.
The top school on the list was the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. It was followed by Princeton University (2), California Institute of Technology (3) , Williams College (4) and Harvard University (5).
As writer Hana R. Alberts explained on Forbes.com:
“Our college rankings are based on five criteria: graduation rate (how good a college is at helping its students finish on time); the number of national and global awards won by students and faculty; students’ satisfaction with their instructors; average debt upon graduation; and postgraduate vocational success as measured by a recent graduate’s average salary and alumni achievement.
“We prize the undergraduate experience and how well prepared students are for the real world rather than focusing on inputs such as acceptance rates and test scores. Our data are from publicly available sources rather than surveys filled out by the schools themselves.”
She explained the rankings are compiled in conjunction with Ohio University economist Richard Vedder and his Center for College Affordability & Productivity.
West Point got the top ranking, Alberts said, because of, among other things, the intense work ethic of the cadets, their drive to succeed on all fronts and because there is no financial cost to the student.
Just as the West Point ranking can be debated — and Alberts notes the many critics of the academy — so too can be the low assessment of UD and WSU.
I’m thinking Forbes should open a branch office here. Dayton has become one of its favorite punching bags whenever its trying to fill in the back end of one of numerous polls.
As for the America’s Best Colleges list — which can be found in full at Forbes.com — it includes various data on each school, including total annual cost, percentage of applicants admitted, average range of SAT and ACT scores, student to teacher ratio and notable alumni.
I’m not sure of all their numbers, but the notable alumni sections that Forbes listed for the various schools is quite skewered in some cases and paltry in many. None more so than Miami University. And in the case of Wittenberg, there is some wrong information. While Al Davis did attend there, he graduated from Syracuse University.
Anyway, here’s some of what Forbes listed for a few of our nearby schools:
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON:
Total cost $38, 210; percent of applicants admitted ,74; SAT range 1050-1260; ACT 23-28; student to faculty ratio, 16 to 1.
Notable alumni — Jon Gruden ‘86, Monday Night Football analyst; Joseph Hinrichs ‘89, vice president of Ford Motor Company; Bob Schaffer ‘84, Colorado State Board of Education Chairman and former U.S. Congressman from Colorado; Dan Patrick ‘79, current Sports Illustrated columnist and syndicated sports radio talk show host, former ESPN anchor.
WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY:
Total cost $18, 865; percent of applicants admitted, 85; SAT range 870-1120; ACT 18-24, student to faculty ratio, 20 to 1.
Notable alumni — Gregory Lockhart, U.S. Attorney; Robert Pollard, singer and songwriter for Guided by Voices; Siva S. Banda, aerospace engineer; Anthony Shaffer, U.S. intelligence officer.
CEDARVILLE UNIVERSITY:
Total cost $28,102, percent of applicants admitted NA; SAT range 1070-1290; ACT 22-27; student to teacher ratio, 15-1
Notable alumni — Matt Shiraki ‘06, served at the White House in the Bush administration; Michael Koerbel ‘00, director/producer of award-winning re:View film series; Stacie (Bennett) Cox ‘00, NASA shuttle engineer; Paula Faris Krueger ‘97, sports anchor, NBC Chicago; Megan Waters Lynch ‘08, summer internship with the United States Mission to the United Nations (USUN), pursuing masters in politics with a concentration in international relations at New York University.
WITTENBERG UNIVERSITY:
Total cost $44,550; percent of applicants admitted, 69; SAT range 1060-1230; ACT 23-29, Student to teacher ratio. 12-1.
Notable alumni — Adam Willis Wagnalls, co-founder of Funk and Wagnalls Company; Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders NFL franchise; Hugh M. Raup, botanist and ecologist; John E. McLaughlin, former deputy director of the CIA, senior fellow at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Brookings Institution.cost
MIAMI UNIVERSITY
Total cost $26,734, percent of applicants admitted, 80; SAT range 1100-1290; ACT 24-29; student to teacher ratio ,15 to 1.
Notable alumni — Jeffrey Vanderbeek ‘81, Chairman and managing partner of the New Jersey Devils hockey franchise.
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY:
Total cost $22,554; percent of applicants admitted, 62; SAT range 1130-1330; ACT 25-30; student to teacher ratio, 13 to 1.
Notable alumni — Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia; Roy Lichtenstein, artist; R.L. Stine, author; Patricia Heaton, Emmy Award-winning actress; Erin Moriarty, CBS news correspondent and Emmy Award winner.
Kenyon College — at No. 22 — got the highest ranking of an Ohio school.
The rest were: College of Wooster (74), Oberlin (88), Marietta (112), Denison (125), Capital (138), Ohio Wesleyan (183), Xavier (196), Hiram (204), Otterbein (221), John Carroll (273), Cedarville (284), Wittenberg (301), Baldwin Wallace (305), Miami (331) and OSU (361).
Case Western Reserve was 439, followed by Ohio University (471), Mount Union (481), UC (538), WSU (554), Kent State (557), Akron (560), Youngstown State (562), BGSU (566), UD (567) Ohio Northern (570) and Toledo (583.)
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