UConn is marking its 10th straight year among the nation\u2019s Top 25 public universities, safeguarding and building on its strengths over the last decade as a pacesetter in student success and academic excellence.<\/p>\n
U.S. News & World Report\u2019s annual rankings place UConn as No. 23 among the nation\u2019s public institutions, the same ranking it held last year and a spot that it shares this year with two peer institutions. The rankings were released Monday.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s assessment shows UConn continues to retain and graduate its students at strong rates, to have a strong academic reputation in the U.S. higher education landscape, ensure that low-income students have access and tools for success, and help keep graduates\u2019 indebtedness below state and national averages.<\/p>\n
\u201cConsistency is a particularly important part of excellence. UConn\u2019s placement among the nation\u2019s top 25 universities over the past decade underscores its deep and abiding commitment to excellence in academics and student success,\u201d says Dr. Andrew Agwunobi, UConn Interim President and CEO of UConn Health.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaintaining our strong position against the challenging backdrop of an unprecedented pandemic is particularly gratifying,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is a testament to the resilience and dedication of UConn\u2019s students, faculty and staff, as well as our state\u2019s leaders, and the many others who support and sustain the institution\u2019s continual drive for quality.\u201d<\/p>\n
UConn\u2019s most impactful improvement this year is in the measure of faculty resources, including having a significant number of faculty who hold the highest degree in their field, having class sizes conducive to strong learning and instruction, and offering appropriate faculty compensation as adjusted for regional differences.<\/p>\n
UConn\u2019s ranking for the academic reputation for its undergraduate programs among other institutions has also been steadily increasing over the last several years. It is calculated as a two-year weighted average of survey responses from presidents, provosts, and admissions leaders, and accounts for 20% of the weighting in the overall ranking.<\/p>\n
U.S. News officials say that ranking is important to help capture advances that aren\u2019t otherwise easy to quantify, such as institutional innovation and a range of other areas. UConn is active in many such initiatives in its academic and research realms, along with its work in faculty recruitment and retention.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s validating to see advancements in areas we are intentionally targeting through University priorities. On the faculty side, we are engaged in a number of initiatives to attract and support a diverse array of excellent scholars with tangible efforts to retain them here at UConn,\u201d says Carl Lejuez, UConn\u2019s Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the student side, our Life-Transformative Education<\/a> initiative is deeply involved in ensuring every student has access and opportunity to engage in co-curricular and mentoring experiences that will maximize their success at UConn and beyond,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n UConn first moved into the U.S. News top 25 rankings in 2011 and has remained there ever since. Before that, it had already been in the top 30 since 2004.<\/p>\n That comes despite demographic changes that have shrunk the nation\u2019s high school graduate pools; changes in state aid and other financial indicators; expansions and improvements at some peer institutions; and other factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic. UConn is tied this year for its No. 23 spot with Penn State and Rutgers, the same as last year.<\/p>\n Many of the components that have driven UConn\u2019s strong rankings align with the University\u2019s academic mission and form the basis of its strategic plan, for which the Office of the Provost is leading a comprehensive update process<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to the U.S. News rankings, UConn continues to show consistently strong performance on many metrics:<\/p>\n \u2022 A jump of six spots in the rankings for faculty resources, an indicator that accounts for 20% of the overall ranking and captures class size indexes, faculty education and compensation, student-faculty ratio, and related factors.<\/p>\n \u2022 High average freshman retention rates and six-year graduation rates, at 94% and 84% respectively; and consistently strong graduation rates for lower-income students receiving Pell Grants as measured on a two-year average. Those measures and others that assess academic outcomes count for 30% of the overall ranking.<\/p>\n \u2022 The remaining 30 percent comprises metrics on student excellence, financial resources, alumni giving and graduate indebtedness. In fact, UConn graduate indebtedness decreased by more than $1,600 between last year\u2019s and this year\u2019s ranking and remains below the state and national averages.<\/p>\n Although the average SAT score of incoming students decreased slightly, UConn does not see that as cause for concern. That is both because it uses a holistic admissions process that considers all elements of a student\u2019s application which are connected to student success, and because it\u2019s piloting a test-optional admissions policy<\/a> to determine if that increases accessibility to talented students who might otherwise face barriers associated with the tests, without diminishing student outcomes.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile it is still very early, we are encouraged by the strong response to the test-optional pilot on the part of prospective students,\u201d says Nathan Fuerst, UConn\u2019s Vice President for Enrollment Planning & Management, adding that UConn\u2019s fall 2021 entering class drew record applications, resulting in the most diverse class in the University\u2019s history.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the onset of the pandemic, the University was well positioned to announce the test-optional pilot, as our enrollment team has been engaged in self-study on the topic for some time,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat we observed in response with this first class of test-optional applicants was very encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n Another measure of the U.S. News ranking, the percentage of living alumni who donate to their institutions, counts for 3% of the total. In UConn\u2019s case, a two-year average of about 7% of living alumni with bachelor\u2019s degrees donated to the university in the timeframe considered, a decline from recent years.<\/p>\n However, that does not indicate a decline in support for the University. Although the numbers of individual alumni who donated might be down, the UConn Foundation<\/a> reported its second straight record-setting year<\/a> with more than $93.3 million in new gifts and commitments in FY2021 \u2013 up from the previous record of $89.5 million the year before, despite significant economic challenges and the COVID-19 pandemic\u2019s effects.<\/p>\n The University was one of 210 national public institutions that were part of this year\u2019s U.S. News & World Report survey. Overall, the rankings included 391 public and private institutions, in which UConn shared the No. 63 ranking with four other institutions.<\/p>\n In addition to the overall institutional ranking, UConn was named the No. 33 best institution for veterans<\/a>, the No. 49 best for undergraduate business<\/a> programs, and No. 58 for best undergraduate nursing<\/a> programs. The undergraduate computer science<\/a> and engineering<\/a> programs also were recognized at numbers 71 and 72 in their academic fields, respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UConn remains among the nation\u2019s top 25 public universities for the tenth consecutive year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":177100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2235,173,92,174,2225,90,2227,2233],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1932],"class_list":["post-177091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-avery-point","category-uconn-hartford","category-uconn-stamford","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-waterbury","category-uconn-edu-homepage","category-university-news"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-29 16:58:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177091"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177138,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177091\/revisions\/177138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/177100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177091"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=177091"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=177091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}