UC Merced's commitment to student success continues to receive national recognition, with the university rising to No. 60 on U.S. News & World Report's list of the nation's best universities, released today, up from No. 97 last year. Among U.S. public universities, UC Merced ranks in the top 30 and jumps to No. 28 in the country.
The ranking marks UC Merced's highest ranking ever in the annual report, and its improvement from last year marks the largest jump since the school's inception. Overall, UC Merced saw the largest increase among the top 100 schools, moving up 37 spots.
The university was also ranked 62nd in the nation for excellence in undergraduate education.
“Student success is our goal, and we are gratified that national organizations are increasingly recognizing this work,” said UC Merced Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz. “What has been built in the heart of California is a testament to our faculty, past and present, who have worked tirelessly with student success as their shared goal.”
Like many other national rankings, U.S. News, which has published its Best Colleges list annually since 1983, updated its methodology this year to focus more on student outcomes, weighing metrics such as social mobility, graduation rates, manageable debt and post-graduation success.
This new approach speaks to UC Merced's signature strengths: A perennial top university in social mobility (which measures how well a college graduates Pell Grant recipients), the school has jumped to fourth in the nation in this area.
UC Merced's well-known enrollment of first-generation students was also key to the school's rise in the rankings. Among the new criteria incorporated into the rankings was a comparison of first-generation graduation rates to graduation rates for non-first-generation students. According to U.S. News, the closer the two figures are, “the better it indicates a school's ability to meet the needs of its students.”
“We always say, we're not doing this to chase rankings,” Muñoz said, “we're pursuing a mission to increase the social and economic mobility of our students, and the country is noticing.”
All nine of the University of California's undergraduate campuses were ranked in the top 100.
15th (tie) – University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Los Angeles
28th (tie) – University of California, Davis and University of California, San Diego
33 – University of California, Irvine
35 – University of California, Santa Barbara
60 – University of California, Merced
76 – University of California, Riverside
82 – University of California, Santa Cruz
Recent reviews of UC Merced:
The Wall Street Journal ranked UC Merced 15th in the nation among public universities and third in California. Third Way's Economic Mobility Index, which measures the economic success a school brings to its graduates, ranked UC Merced seventh in the nation. Money Magazine, which switched to a rating system instead of rankings this year, gave UC Merced a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars. The Princeton Review named UC Merced one of the best colleges in the nation and the West and ranked it 12th on its Green Colleges list.
