By Jimmy Robertson
Virginia Tech received top-30 rankings in the areas of engineering, learning communities, and computer science in the U.S. News & World Report 2022-23 Best Colleges rankings released Monday, Sept. 12.
U.S. News & World Report ranks bachelor’s degree-granting institutions in the United States annually to help prospective high school students find their best fits for college.
All rankings consider 17 measures of academic quality, including items such as graduation rates, retention rates, social mobility (how well schools graduated students receiving federal Pell Grants), affordability, value of the degree after graduation, faculty resources, opinion of experts (presidents, provosts, etc.), financial resources, and test scores.
Virginia Tech also scored highly in several categories, including a No. 23 ranking in the National Universities class for Top Public Schools, a jump of seven spots from last year’s ratings.
U.S. News & World Report divided its rankings of more than 1,400 schools into divisions of national universities, liberal arts colleges, regional universities, and regional colleges. Schools in the National Universities category offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master’s and Ph.D. programs.
The ratings reflected well on Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering. The university’s engineering program ranked No. 16 in the Best Undergraduate Engineering (doctorate) category.
Various programs within the College of Engineering also scored well:
industrial engineering (No. 4), environmental engineering (No. 8), civil engineering (No. 11), aerospace engineering (No. 12), electrical engineering (tie No. 15), computer engineering (No. 25), and computer science (tie No. 29).
The university came in at No. 22 in the Learning Communities division that focuses on students who typically take two or more linked courses as a group and get to know each other and their professors especially well. College presidents, chief academic officers, deans of students and deans of admissions from more than 1,500 schools each nominate up to 15 institutions with stellar examples of learning communities.
In addition, the university scored highly in the following areas: Best Colleges for Veterans (No. 34), Best Undergraduate Business (No. 39), Most Innovative Schools: National Universities (No. 41), and Overall National Universities (No. 62).
