what's a comprehensive college?

Applying to College
1

<p>you know how the US News rankings has colleges divided into the sections: national universities, liberal arts colleges, master's universities, and comprehensive colleges... what is a comprehensive college? if a school makes the top northern comprehensive college list how good does that mean the school is?</p>

2

<p>yea i never got that either. please explain.</p>

3

<p>i think comprehensive means a college that does not offer masters or doctoral degress but are too large to be classified as a LAC.</p>

4

<p>is squarehead right?</p>

<p>also i noticed that on the us news list they have national universities: tier 1 and then national universities: tier 3... what happened to tier 2?</p>

5

<p>Tier 2 consists of colleges ranked between 50 and 120.</p>

6

<p>A Comprehensive College is defined as an institution offering a range of degree programs that include the liberal arts, as well as professional fields such as business and education.</p>

<p>These institutions focus primarily on undergraduate education just as the liberal arts colleges do but grant fewer than 50 percent of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines. At these schools, at least 10 percent of undergraduate degrees awarded are bachelor's degrees. </p>

<p>There are 324 comprehensive colleges-bachelor's, ranked within four regions: North, South, Midwest, and West. Like all U.S. News categories, the regional groupings are derived from classifications established by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/rankccregion_brief.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/rankccregion_brief.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>They don't seem to be well-known schools...</p>

7

<p>"Tier 2 consists of colleges ranked between 50 and 120."</p>

<p>and all this time i though those were tier 1 as well... now all of a sudden it seems so much harder to get into a tier 1 school lol</p>

8

<p>yea i had the same question, i thought comp college, meant community college or something like that. and about tier 2, they weren't listed and i also noticed that. I don't like the usnews book much, i doesn't give the information you need just a bunch of crap that leads you to ask why you bought the book in the first place, 1000 pages wasted in printing the book, just call it an index.</p>