U. ranks highest ever in this year's 'U.S. News' poll

The University acheived its highest rating ever in the annual U.S. News and World Report survey, jumping seven notches to be ranked 13th out of the top 204 universities in the nation. The University again ranked last in the Ivy League, but was only one-half of one percent behind 12th place Brown University in the magazine's ranking system. The annual survey reviews and ranks over 1300 four-year colleges and universities, which are then divided up into categories based on size and specialty. The University falls under the division which the magazine considers the "major leagues of American higher education." The schools are scored using five criteria: academic reputation, student selectivity, faculty strength, financial resources and student satisfaction. Last year, the University placed 20th in the poll. In 1988 it finished 15th, and in 1987 it was number 19. The University placed 16th in academic reputation, 17th in the student selectivity, 21st in faculty strength and 16th in student satisfaction. But the University's jump to 13th place -- which ties it with the University of California at Berkeley -- is due mostly to the 62-notch jump in the financial resources category. Last year the University was ranked 83rd in that category. Of the seven schools that fell behind the University in this year's poll, four were state schools. No one could be reached yesterday at U.S. News' headquarters in Washington, but Assistant to the President William Epstein said the University took a leap forward because this year's polls did not include state and local appropriations as part of university finances. Despite the high ranking, Epstein said that the University takes the polls with "a very large grain of salt" because of the changing measures by which schools are judged and the subjectivity of the standards used. "It's always a confidence builder to know tht people on the outside are taking recognition of what we are doing," he said. "But if you start playing with the criteria, you can make one university go up and one go down." Besides the seven other Ivy League schools -- topped by first place winner Harvard University, third place Yale and fourth place Princeton University -- only Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, Massachusettes Institute of Technology, Duke University and University of Chicago finished ahead of the University. Rice University, Johns Hopkins University, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Michigan, University of North Carolina and Northwestern University finished ahead of the University last year, but fell behind in this year's poll.

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