YU Garners Top Fifty Status For Fourth Consecutive Year By Pinchas Shapiro

For the fourth year in a row, Yeshiva University appeared in the first tier of US News and World Report's ranking of the top national universities in the United States. Dropping two places from its number forty-two listing last year, Yeshiva failed to move out of the bottom ten of the first tier, falling to number forty-four. Ranked along side four other universities, Yeshiva was tied with Tulane, University of California-Santa Barbra, University of Texas-Austin, and the University of Washington.

"We are pleased that US News has again rated Yeshiva University as a top tier university," said President and Rosh HaYeshiva Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm of the new rankings. "We have an outstanding faculty and a dedicated group of deans and administrators. Their hard work is reflected in this continuing recognition of the excellence of our academic programs. The rating also reflects enhancements we have made and scholarships we are able to provide thanks to the strong support we continue to receive from so many alumni and friends."

U.S. News took into account a broad array of considerations including academic reputation, student SAT performance, financial resources, distribution of class size, relative selectivity, graduation rate, alumni giving rate, and other considerations in compiling its list.

In most areas, Yeshiva maintained poor ratings, with only a few topics ranking high. This uneven performance revealed some lopsided figures. Of first tier universities, Yeshiva tied only with Wake Forest in boasting the lowest proportion of courses with enrollments of over fifty students. On the flip side, Yeshiva's reputation rank, the average rating of the quality of a school's academic programs as evaluated by officials at similar institutions, mimicked last years performance by posting a meek 3.0 on a five point scale. This number once again lagged behind all other top fifty universities.

Only one first tier institution, forty-ninth placed University of California-Irvine, posted a worse selectivity rank than Yeshiva. Coupled with this result was Yeshiva's corollary rate of acceptance, seventy-nine percent, the least impressive among its top tier peers.

A number of robust performances in select areas, however, salvaged Yeshiva's top tier placement. Yeshiva's financial resources rank landed it in the fourteenth slot nationally, placing it squarely above Cornell, Brown, and Dartmouth. The financial resources rank considers a university's total educational expenditures per full time student. Yeshiva's success in this category is thought to be advantaged by its dual faculty of both secular and Judaic instructors.

Although it dropped sixteen places from last year's rankings, Yeshiva's twenty-eighth ranked faculty resources level also merits attention. This figure considers a university's faculty compensation level, proportion of faculty members with Ph.D. degrees, proportion of full-time faculty members, student/faculty ratio, and class size distribution. Yeshiva fell fourteen places behind Stanford, the school it was previously tied with in this category, and fell behind Brown, Columbia and Dartmouth in this area, three schools that it eclipsed in last years scoring..