Scranton Ranked in U.S. News Top 10 for 30 Years

For three decades U.S. News & World Report has ranked The University of Scranton among the top 10 regional universities in the north, placing Scranton No. 5 in its 2024 edition of the “Best Colleges” guidebook, which became available online today.

“From the beginning of its Best College rankings, U.S. News has advised colleges not to cheer – or jeer – about year-to-year position changes in the rankings, but rather to look for consistency of trends in the ranking achieved over the years,” said Rev. Joseph Marina, S.J., president of The University of Scranton. “Well, I am pleased to say, through the talent and dedication of our faculty and staff, and the outstanding success of our students and graduates, we have achieved exceptional consistency in our status as a top 10 university.”

U.S. News also ranked Scranton No. 8 in its category for “Best Undergraduate Teaching,” a selection of the top colleges in the nation that express a strong commitment to undergraduate teaching.

Several of Scranton’s programs were also included in national rankings, as opposed to listings by category. U.S. News ranked Scranton among the nation’s “Best Undergraduate Programs in Accounting” at No. 38 in the U.S.; among the “Best Undergraduate Programs in Finance” at No. 40; among the “Best Undergraduate Nursing Programs” at No. 112; and among “Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs” at No. 222 (where a doctorate is not offered). Scranton’s was also listed among the 554 “Best Undergraduate Computer Science Programs” in the nation. Scranton also ranked No. 211 among America’s “Best Undergraduate Business Programs,” which just listed schools that hold accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

For these program listings, U.S. News only ranked schools holding the highest recognized national accreditations in their fields. The rankings were based solely on dean and senior faculty recommendations from peer institutions.

In addition, U.S. News ranked Scranton No. 54 as a “Best Value Regional University in the North,” which compares academic quality of programs to cost of attendance. This is the tenth consecutive year U.S. News has recognized Scranton as a “Best Value” school. Scranton was ranked No. 115 in its category in “Top Performers on Social Mobility,” which looks at the success of schools that enroll and graduate students who were awarded with Pell Grants.

U.S. News uses data on up to 19 measures of academic quality to rank bachelor’s degree colleges in America. For its rankings, U.S. News considers a range of quality indicators that include a peer assessment of academic excellence; faculty resources; financial resources; graduate indebtedness; freshman retention; graduation rates; Pell graduation rates, and graduation performance rates, which compares a school’s actual graduation rates with predicted graduation rates based on characteristics of the incoming class. U.S. News ranking analysis also includes student selectivity, as measured by SAT or ACT scores and high school ranking of students in the top 25 percent of their class.

U.S. News categorizes colleges for their rankings based on the official Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classification of universities.

The 2024 U.S. News “Best Colleges” rankings became available online Sept. 18.

Take a look at how the campus has changed over the past three decades (notice - spring finally arrived in 2013)

And how the campus looks now.