Hello everyone! I just have a question regarding the ranking of American University. Personally, I absolutely love the school and currently it’s my number one choice but i keep noticing that it’s ranking is pretty low. I know it’s not prestigious as Princeton or even Boston University but it shouldn’t be that low right? Is there something I’m missing, like are the dorms actually really bad, is there a high crime rate, are the people mean, etc??
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It’s not really that low when you look at the big picture. According to USNWR it’s 74 out of 310 in National Universities . That makes it in the top 24% of US national universities. When you look at Niche rankings (this combines all universities - National Universities, Liberal Arts, Regional universities & colleges) AU has an A- rating and a ranking of 189 of 2919. That makes it in the top 6% of 4 year colleges. Also from your previous post you are looking at International Studies in which AU ranks 9th in the world - that’s world not US. So you could go to a higher overall ranking school, but your department might not be as high ranked. Finally AU has an upward trend in the rankings - I think rankings are a tool to be used, but not a major deciding factor. Tenelytown is a safe neighborhood. Homeland Security is located there as is and Sidwell Friends School (several children of presidents & VP’s have attended). Ina adition AU has several safety programs for students to use which can research on their site. Personally I felt it was safer than GW’s main campus. They have brand new dorms for sophomores, but their freshman dorms are pretty typical. They are not suite style or going to win awards for best dorms. If you have a three person room, I would say crowded. However they are hoping to reduce the number of triples because of the new sophomore dorms. All the AU students we met were very nice, but they were all AU ambassadors.
In total agreement with what sahmkc wrote. Wondering what data Tuvana 7 is looking at to conclude that “it’s ranking is pretty low.”
Have you visited and attended classes? To be honest, one of my kids took it off the list after doing that. It wasn’t location or campus – it was the class. She happened to have read the article the class was to discuss. She thought the comments and analysis of most of the other students was superficial, and the prof didn’t seem to expect much.
Now… that was ONE class. But I do think the kids who want to go to school in DC generally rank into GTown first, GW second, and American 3rd. But you can get good internship opportunities at American, and if you want to work in politics in DC, it is still a viable option.
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American isn’t a bad school. #74 in the nation isn’t that good if you’re looking for a big name school with a grand reputation, but there’s worse schools out there and by no means will be thinks you’re an idiot. It also depends on what you want to study. AU has a great IR program and a good journalism school, for example.
The reason why American suffers in my opinion is because it tends to be considered the worst of the big 3 DC Schools. Most people rank them Georgetown #1, George Washington #2, and American #3. This is true for their IR programs in addition to most every other field of study.
As a side note, I’m a current GW Int’l Affairs student, so feel free to talk to me about GW, DC schools, the Int’l Affairs major, etc.
Best of luck to you!
I remember the past president of AU being quoted somewhere about how AU’s ranking on USNWR is not something to be concerned about as it is being compared to national universities with vast facilities including medical schools, schoosl of engineering etc with doctoral programs etc. It would be more accurate to compare AU with mid-size urban universities rather than large national ones. But given that they are placed in that category, I’d say #74 is pretty darn good.
It is also a relatively very young university, so they do not have as many alumni as say Georgetown. This affects alumni giving, which plays a role in rankings.
My daughter is a senior and finds her fellow students smart and motivated and her classes challenging and informative. She was a very good student who also got into GW but chose AU since she preferred the campus. She’s very happy there and we have no complaints about the school (except for the food, which isn’t very good from what I hear). AU’s students are well received by employers and they have great success career wise - especially international affairs (SIS) and business (Kogod). Good luck with your decision and let rankings be only a part of your decision making.
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@myjanda Thanks for your input. I was impressed with all of the students my son & I interacted with at AU. I met an ambassador who also chose AU over GW. She wasn’t even our guide, she just was walking next to us and introduced herself. I really get tired of hearing how AU is the third ranked school in DC. GW is 56 and AU is 74 - I think they are pretty much in the same grouping of rankings. Neither are a top 20 like GTown. My kid has the stats for GTown, but we would be full pay with no chance for merit. He wants to go to law school, so money has to be a consideration for him. He has chosen to apply ED to AU over GW because he felt at “home” when he visited. People put so much emphasis on rank, but just because you attend a higher ranking school than someone else does not mean you will be more successful. I guess if it’s important for you to able to brag about rank, then maybe you should pick a school on that factor, but I think fit is a lot more important. Neither my alma mater or my husband’s break the top 100 in USNWR and we are doing just fine.
“are the dorms actually really bad, is there a high crime rate, are the people mean,”
There are some very highly ranked schools with old dorms, and located in areas where there is a high crime rate. There are nice people and mean people at pretty much any university. Probably the very highest ranked schools are more likely to have relatively more very highly competitive people, who might come across as mean. For example, I once missed a class at a highly ranked university, and one student refused to tell me what homework assignment had been given out on the explicitly stated reason that he wanted to do better than me on the upcoming test (it didn’t work – a different student told me what I needed to study).
Rankings are due to other factors, some of which at least related to academics (how difficult are the classes and the homework and the tests, how much academically is expected of the student, what is the average SAT of incoming students, what percent of students actually end up graduating from the same school, …).
Also, there are thousands of colleges and universities. Anything in the top 200 is pretty good.
My nephew just got into a Top 20 law school after graduating from AU with a mediocre GPA. I’m still a little confused about why he chose to go there full-pay if he was planning to go to law school, but I didn’t have to pay for it! My husband went to grad school there - great internship programs.
If you think AU is “low ranked” (and possibly beneath you?) then you probably have the stats for decent merit aid. Maybe that will be enough to keep it as your top choice.