<p>Forbes released their latest ranking of America's top colleges on Wednesday.</p>
<p>SMU now holds the 123 spot overall for colleges and number 29 for colleges in the South.</p>
<p>Three other Texas schools ranked higher than SMU on the overall list, including Rice University, the University of Dallas and Trinity University. However, SMU held strong over rival school TCU, which came in at No. 277.</p>
<p>The university rankings are based on five different categories: post-graduate success, student satisfaction, debt, Four Year graduation rate and competitive awards.</p>
<p>Here are some of the STATS for TCU per The Best 376 Colleges from Princeton review (2011) compared to last years’ The Best 373 Colleges from Princeton review (2010):</p>
<pre><code> 2010 2011
</code></pre>
<p>Admissions Selectivity Rating 86 80</p>
<h1>of applicants 11,953 14,085</h1>
<p>% of applicants accepted 59 53
% of acceptees attending 26 25</p>
<h1>accepting a place on wait list 264 478</h1>
<p>% admitted from wait list 58 37
Range SAT CR 520-630 520-630
Range SAT Math 530-650 530-650
Range SAT Writing 520-630 520-630
% graduated top 10% of class 30 33</p>
<p>“The admissions selectivity rating is on a scale of 60-99, this rating is a measure of how competitive admissions is at the school. This rating is determined by several factors, including the class rank of entering freshmen, test scores, and percentage of applicants accepted.”</p>
<p>Well, the most important “rating” is the one I heard from my daughter this week. She LOVES TCU, loves all her classes, loves college in general (versus high school style learning), got into a sorority (though we did have our Black Wed of tears by phone in the middle of the process) and loves all the girls in her sorority and new friends she’s met in her dorm and in class.</p>
<p>Whew! As a parent, that’s all I wanted to hear. Thumbs up to TCU. So far, so good.</p>
<p>er…why wasn’t Austin listed as being ranked higher than smu? is smu really a rival…doesn’t seem like they can compete with tcu in football.</p>
<p>Dear SMU Mom from NJ</p>
<p>Your point of posting this on the TCU page was…</p>
<p>(It’s not only Jersey Shore giving people from NJ a bad name)</p>
<p>Rankings are an interesting thing. Business Week ranked TCU’s Business School #30. U.S. News & World Report ranked it #69. The Engineering School is in the top 40 of universities that don’t offer doctorates in engineering. TCU has amazing rankings to boast about, but the decision is about a lot more than rankings.</p>
<p>rice1961 any new update of TCU SMU</p>
<p>Rice1961, love to get your comments on what is the best school in TX. For sure Rice</p>
<p>As a senior my son has had a great all around experience at TCU. He is also successfully working his way through the med school app process with interviews as a good sign of possible acceptance next eyar. I say this not to boast, but to show that rankings don’t tell a 100% accurate story on either end of the scale. Here’s his story as just ONE example that is common to TCU – he was accepted to top UCs in CA but chose TCU. They gave him a nice scholarship. They have been great in the pre-med counseling process and have worked to help him get into the med school app process by doing mock interviews, doing all the letter of rec, etc. The friends he’s made have been great and he has thoroughly enjoyed and been challenged by his classes. He has had such a good experience, his sister is likely to follow right in his footsteps and as parents we think this is positive. It’s expensive…but so is every other non-public, OOS option! TCU can speak for itself…it really isn’t a comparison issue.</p>
<p>I had posted this some time ago, and since the issue of rankings seems to have come up again on this board, thought this was a good one for prospective applicants to consider. Our daughter will be attending a different school now that all is said and done (got off the wait list at her top choice) but not because we didn’t have enormous respect and admiration for TCU. This school is in a position to become one of the best in the nation:</p>
<p>Anyone considering TCU for business may be interested in Bloomberg’s Businessweek Undergraduate Business School Rankings 2013:
Goes something like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>TCU (Neeley)
followed by:</li>
<li>James Madison</li>
<li>SMU (Cox)</li>
<li>USC (Marshall)</li>
<li>Wisconsin-Madison</li>
<li><p>Texas A&M (Mays) and</p></li>
<li><p>Santa Clara</p></li>
<li><p>Tulane (Freeman) - this one really surprises me, would have thought it would be north of 49…</p></li>
</ol>
<p>While rankings don’t factor high on our priority list over here, it does seem that a business publication’s rankings of business schools is something to pay attention to.</p>
<p>From all accounts, Neeley appears to be soaring high and fast. I understand that the school has the $ (endowment and otherwise) to fund it extremely well and plans to continue to prioritize it.</p>