Newsweek Ranks Allegheny College in Top 20 in Nation for Academic Rigor

Aug. 8, 2012 — In its newly released “Best Colleges for You” rankings, Newsweek magazine has named Allegheny College as one of the top 20 colleges nationwide for academic rigor.

Newsweek based its rankings on the selectivity of institutions, the student-to-faculty ratio and an assessment of student workload.

Four colleges and universities in Pennsylvania were in Newsweek’s top 20: making the grade in addition to Allegheny College were Carnegie Mellon University, Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania.

The top 20 also includes Columbia University, Amherst College, Davidson College, Dartmouth College, Princeton University, Yale University, Barnard College, University of Chicago, Middlebury College, Washington and Lee University, Washington University in St. Louis, Furman University, MIT, Reed College, Bowdoin College and Harvard University.

Allegheny was immediately preceded in the rankings by Carnegie Mellon, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. Immediately following Allegheny in the rankings were Carleton College, Northwestern University and Duke University.

“Students come to Allegheny because they know that the academic rigor that they find here will prepare them for a lifetime of career opportunities and challenges, and our alumni consistently credit the rigor of their coursework for their success later in life,” said Brian F. Dalton, vice president for enrollment and communications at Allegheny College. “Alumni also reiterate the excellence of an Allegheny education as reflected in internships, study abroad, undergraduate research and the unique one-to-one relationships that made their work with faculty so memorable.”

In compiling the “Best Colleges for You” rankings, Newsweek began the selection process with an initial list of nearly 2,000 accredited four-year colleges and universities and found the top 200 most selective according to the percentage of applicants admitted and the median SAT/ACT score for accepted students.

In addition to inclusion in many other college guidebooks, Allegheny is listed among the 100 “best values” in liberal arts colleges in the nation, according to Kiplinger’s, a private financial advising company. Allegheny also shares the distinction, with only 39 other colleges, of being featured in Loren Pope’s “Colleges That Change Lives.” Only three colleges in Pennsylvania are included in this highly influential guidebook, which was written by the former education editor of the New York Times.