Texas A&M Ranked 6th Nationally Among Public Universities By New Online Organization
Texas A&M University is ranked sixth in the nation among public universities by a new online organization, TheBestColleges.org, whose editors say they base their ratings on weighted factors that focus on economic value, quality of life, academic quality and student satisfaction. Based on those factors, Texas A&M placed first among public universities in Texas.
“With this inaugural 2011-2012 edition of The Best Colleges Top 50 Colleges and Universities in America, we set out to create a college ranking that exceeds all the others in focusing on what really matters to students and those who may be helping foot the bill for their education,” the editors note. “We’ve gone beyond investigating standard indicators of academic quality and student satisfaction used by other major ranking systems to also consider indicators of the economic value of a school and the quality of life offered by the city or town it is located in.”
The list is dominated by private schools, headed by Princeton and Harvard, with the top-ranked public institution, The College of William and Mary, placing fifth overall. The other leading public institutions are the University of North Carolina (12th overall), University of Virginia (15th), University of Michigan (21st) and the University of California at Berkeley (23rd). Texas A&M ranked 26th overall.
Texas A&M was also credited by the editors with having one of the nation’s 50 “most amazing college campuses” — one of the quality-of-life indicators that factored into the overall rankings.
“Choosing a college is one of the most important decisions a person will ever make. The quality of social and economic opportunities opened up to a person in their lifetime will in large part be determined by whether and where they choose to go to school,” The Best Colleges editors state. “In some respects, to choose a college is to choose a future. That’s why many people talk about college education as an investment. Students (and their parents!) pour enormous amounts of money into tuition, fees, books and living expenses, not to mention all the time and effort, expecting to get something in return. Naturally, they want to know they are making a smart choice in where to invest their time and money.”
The Best College editors use the following weighted factors to arrive at their rankings: Economic value (35 percent), which includes real cost, median starting salary and median mid-career salary of graduates; quality of life (30 percent), which takes in such factors as cost of living index in city/town, median age of local residents, median household income and percentage of residents with college degrees; academic quality (20 percent, which includes acceptance rate and student-to-faculty ratio; and student satisfaction (15 percent), which includes enrollment rate, freshman-to sophomore retention rate and six-year graduation rate.
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Media contact: Lane Stephenson, News & Information Services at (979) 845-4662
Might want to fix that headline and the tweet…..A&M is 26th, not 6th. And when you look at the list, it is 2nd in the state behind Rice.
Exactly, which still makes it the top public school
@Heather04…key word here is PUBLIC. 6th PUBLIC university (26th overall) #1 PUBLIC university in Texas…Rice is private. WAY TO GO A&M!!
Heather04: Read the headline closely. #1 Public University in the state, #6 in the nation. With private universities included, A&M is ranked 26, you are correct.
Heather, A&M is 6th among public universities and first in Texas among public universities in the state. Rice is a private school.
@Heather,
Headline is correct. A&M is 6th in PUBLIC Universities. The others are private. Rice is also a pivate University.
It says we are ranked 6th among PUBLIC Universities and 1st among PUBLIC Universities in Texas, 26th overall. By the way there is a typo in the article (it says media age of local residents). Proud to be a former student! Whoop!
the headline is correct. we are 6th nationally among PUBLIC institutions, 26th overall. Rice is a private university…not public.
@Heather04 Might want to read the headline first. Ranked 6th Among PUBLIC Universities. And 1st among PUBLIC universities in Texas.
Heather- the tweet and headline note A&Ms position among PUBLIC universities…. Rice is private….
The title clearly says 6th among “public” universities. Rice is a “private” university.
If you read, you’ll notice they say “public universities”. Rice is private.
Or, Heather, you could read the headline and article. A&M #1 in Texas, 6th Nationally among PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. #detailsmatter
Actually, the headline is correct. #1 PUBLIC university in Texas and #6th PUBLIC in the US.
Heather: the key words in headline are “public” and “Texas.” Rice is not a public university and the other 25 schools in front of TAMU are not in Texas and/or public.
The headline and tweet says public university. Rice is a private university, making A&M first in Texas. There are only 5 public universities ranked ahead of A&M, making A&M sixth in the nation.
Heather04, you may want to read a little closer. It’s 26th among ALL institutions and 6th among PUBLIC universities.
may want to figure out the difference between a public and private University…
You might wanna read the article again Heather. It’s talking about public universities only
Heather: reread the headline. Rice is a private university, not a public one.
The headline says PUBLIC universities. A&M is the 6th ranked in nation, and 1st in Texas, out of the public universities.
It’s correct, it says “public” universities.
The headline was “public” universities. Rice is a private university and so are many of the others in between 1-26. A & M is the 6th of public universities.
That’s why it uses the phrase “PUBLIC Universities.” We do rank behind private universities, but the headline is correct as written. Last time I checked, context clues were a good thing.
@Heather04: The headline is actually correct! It is the sixth amongst public universities and the 26th overall. Same thing goes for the state of Texas. Rice is a private school.
@Heather04
The headline and tweet are correct. It states that A&M is 6th Nationally among PUBLIC universities. You are right when you said it is 26th, however that is overall with public and private universities. A&M is also number one in Texas as far as public universities…Rice is a private school.
6th among “Public Universities” Heather. Don’t hate.
Heather04 might want to try her hand at comprehension. Rice is a private university. A&M is 6th among public schools, meaning that 20 of the top 26 universities listed are private institutions. No tweaking necessary and thus the headline is 100% accurate.
You may want to read that headline a little closer. It says 6th nationally among PUBLIC universities. There are 20 universities listed ahead of A&M that are PRIVATE universities, including Rice.
The headline says ranked 1st public university In texas. Rice is a private university.
@Heather04: You may want to pay attention to the part where it says “…Among Public Universities”
Public schools heather… PUBLIC SCHOOLS. Says it very clearly both in the tweet and in the article.
Um…Heather04, title says public universities…. if you count down the list A&M is the 6th public university and Rice is also private. Therefore, title and tweet are correct.
Heather,
You should have read the headline more carefully before shooting off your keyboard. The headline reads, “Texas A&M Ranked sixth in the nation among PUBLIC universities.”
The last I checked, Rice is a private university, as are twenty of the twenty-five colleges and universities ranked ahead of Texas A&M by TheBestColleges.org.
Gig ‘Em!
L. E. La Rue, TAMU “78
The title is correct, it is #6 public, #26 overall
It’s the 6th public university and first public university in Texas. Rice is a private school, and as the article said “private schools dominated the national list”.
So, it’s correct.
You aggies sure are funny.
How many aggies does it take to correct an ignorant comment on the internet?
are y’all sure heather isn’t right? lets read this one more time
Please proofread your Facebook post. The article referenced in the post lists A&M as 26th, not 6th.
How many more times must we tell you Heather?
Way to go A&M!
Do you think Heather got the message?
Or maybe heather could have just read the 75 comments. Over kill maybe?
Looks like all of our comments were approved at the same time, LOL
Too bad that http://www.thebestcolleges.org/ is a known spam site only created to generate traffic and increase sales at for-profit universities like the University of Phoenix.
This list is a joke and they picked whatever universities (and left off others) so that they could drive as much traffic to their site as possible.
Nothing to be proud of here!
I’m not quite sure why it took almost 50 aggies all with nearly identical comments to tell Heather she’s wrong. Perhaps the rankings should be reviewed.
Sincerely,
A guy from that other Texas public school that outranks A&M in every other ranking I’ve ever seen.
This site is a joke. They only have 10 Texas schools in their database. They left out schools like TCU, Texas State, UTA, North Texas..
According to this site LeTouraneu(spelling) in Longview, Texas is the 10th best school in Texas. YEAH. OK. They really sound like they know what they’re talking about.
Oh, and heather, why don’t you CHECK THE TITLE. It says PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Of course, a Tea Sipper has to jump in here and say something, right Ronnie? If anyone wants to see a typical Sipper, go to YouTube and look up Longhorn Bum.
Dang y’all, quit hating on Heather.
List is a joke. When the featured colleges on the homepage of the ranking website are Everest and University of Phoenix you know something is afoul.
“Our Picks for The Best Colleges”
Then it lists Everest Online and some other BS colleges.
Come on now.
@Ronnie I was thinking the same thing; thank you for beating me to that comment. There are literally 50 comments that say the same thing. Is it some kind of aggie tradition to only read the very first comment in a thread before commenting? And yeah, this is the first time I have EVER seen the ags outrank UT in anything; there is clearly some kind of weird bias there.
I love A&M, but this form of evaluating a college is crap. How does the median income of residents have anything to do with things?!? Way too much of the criteria is irrelevant.
We all know Texas is better. Poor aggies.
Yeah, t-sips… Cause we sip tea. Please stop. Your insults hurt too much. And your football team………
Heather obviously went to tu.
Derek, apparently you aren’t aware that in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) research A&M is one of the top 20 programs in the US. You can find that ranking from a report by the NSF. If I remember correctly tu ranked around number 40. Also, if you aren’t aware, in Academia, research is all that matters.
Gig ‘Em, baby. Gig ‘Em! Take that, Tea Sips. We out rank you on thebestcolleges.org. Who needs US News & World Report and their fancy rankings? We’re ahead of tu, Trinity, and Southwestern. Everyone wants to go to College Station, baby!
Poor, poor Heather!
Why is it that every post for something related to A&M has a bunch of tsips talking trash? I know you guys didn’t actually go to t.u., or any university for that matter, but isn’t there something better for you to do? If you were the best, you’d be content with it, like us true Aggies are. Why don’t you go throw things at children if you just want to harass people.
hmmm…..bet Heather is a Teasip…hahaha
no wonder the US’s education system lags behind many other countries. Academic quality counted for a puny 20%, while ‘economic value’ counted for 35%. And SIX YEAR graduation rate? What the heck? What happened to graduating in four years?
The moderator for this web site must suck. Comments have to be approved first so I guess a few hours went by where people thought they were the first one to correct Heather.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this comment I am typing now gets overly repeated.
Well, when I clicked on the link, it said:
“University of Phoenix is one of our top recommended universities based on student ratings”
…
This would be a great honor IF TheBestColleges.org had any standing or qualifications to rank schools. It’s website does seem less than impartial. In any case, it got it right: A&M is among the top public schools in the USA.
Why ~80% of posts are just to correct one person, Heather!!?
Get off high horses! Nobody is perfect.
(The sips are just aggravated that they didn’t have an opportunity to purchase the number 5 spot on the list…)
This is true, Texas A&M is the TOP PUBLIC school in the state of Texas. Gig’m Aggies.
This websites ranking of colleges doesn’t seem very accurate compared to other well known college ranking publications.
Anyone with a brain knows The University of Texas is superior in every way when compared to aggy.
Way to go Texas A&M!!!! Sips, go infest your own sites. You don’t matter anymore.
Actually, it does say “the other leading public institutions”…blah blah (12th), (21st), and A&M as 26th. I think there is MASS confusion over this. oh dear…thanks and gig ‘em!
A little joke for yall. Why did it take 100 aggies to tell Heather04 that she was wrong?
i am so dissapointed in all these comments that I feel I must take me and my high academic standards to tu
Well, for those of you wondering why so many comments are identical, it is because the comments were required to be approved before posting, and apparently that many people corrected her before they approved the messages..
Also, for those of you saying the University of Texas is ranked higher on every publication, you’re obviously not a fan of reading..
Also consider that the quality/value of living in College Station is much higher than in Austin, where it costs two to three times as much to rent an apartment. Also when you use the criteria mentioned in the article (such as median age of people in the area, which is significant for college students who do not want to live in an area with a lot of old/creepy/homeless people, i.e. Austin)
The Longhorns need to realize that Texas A&M isn’t a static university. They are advancing from the old Agricultural and Mechanical military college into a world class university and those of you too ignorant to understand (or are trolls trying to ignite flames)should either understand that or not bother looking like a biased fool.
@David: Actually, Letourneau is top ranking in Engineering, Computer Science, and Aviation nation-wide. Just because you’ve never heard of a school doesn’t mean the quality of the school is in any way diminished!