<p>Just curious, why is Villanova not ranked by the U.S. News as a top national university? Does this mean it is more of a grad school?</p>
<p>It’s #1 under Masters Universities (North)</p>
<p>[Master’s</a> Universities (North) Rankings - Best Colleges - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/masters-universities-north-rankings]Master’s”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/masters-universities-north-rankings)</p>
<p>Why are these forums so dead?</p>
<p>Because it’s still sort of a downtime in the admissions process… things should start to pick up in late October/November for the EA and then be fully rolling in December/January.</p>
<p>It has a couple of graduate programs that are well respected (law, nursing). However, for undergrads, it’s not recognized much beyond its basketball program.</p>
<p>The US News and World Report category of “Top National Universities” is only for universites that offer a wide range of undergraduate majors as well as masters and doctoral degrees. The category of “Best Universities Masters” ranks schools that offer a full range of undergraduate and masters programs but offer few, if any, doctoral degress. Because Villanove doesn’t offer a wide range of doctoral degress, it is included in this category.
Because many of the schools in this category tend to attract students from surrounding states, USN&WR groups the Best Universities Masters schools into 4 regions (North, South, Midwest, & West). Villanova has been ranked #1 in the Best Universities Masters (North) for almost 20 years.<br>
The rankings really have very little to do with the quality of the masters and doctoral programs. The rankings ARE mostly about the quality of the undergraduate experience. US News compares schools based on the such criteria as average undergrad graduation rate, the size of undergraduate classes, SAT scores of incoming freshman, average freshman retention rate, student/faculty ratio, acceptance rate, etc.</p>
<p>The engineering program was ranked 10th for schools that don’t offer a PHD</p>