Bates recognized for top academic experience

The latest editions of the nation’s “go-to” college guides and magazines continue to rank Bates College among the best U.S. liberal arts colleges.

In the U.S. News and World Report 2004 edition of America’s Best Colleges, Bates is ranked 23rd among 217 liberal arts colleges, continuing a presence in the top 25 lasting more than a decade. In ranking the colleges, the factors the magazine considers include assessment by administrators at peer institutions, retention of students, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving and the difference between the proportion of students expected to graduate and the proportion who actually do.

In its second year of citing “schools with outstanding programs that lead to student success,” U.S. News singled out Bates for its outstanding undergraduate research and creative projects, and for study-abroad opportunities.

In a follow-up Special Report on Sept. 8, U.S. News listed Bates 33rd in the nation in the category of  “Great Deals at Great Schools”— liberal arts colleges of highest academic quality that offer the best value. Bates’ selectivity ranked eighth in the nation, with an acceptance rate of 28 percent.

Bates also has been recognized as one of the nation’s top schools with “Best Overall Academic Experience for Undergraduates” in The Best 351 Colleges: 2004 Edition, published by The Princeton Review. The guide offers a variety of top-20 lists based on student responses to a series of surveys. Ranked 12th in the academic experience category, Bates is one of three schools to make the list (Amherst is ranked fourth; Williams, 13th).

“The happy students of Bates College agree that ‘Bates is the small academic atmosphere every liberal arts school brags about,'” says the guide. The magazine’s top-20 “Best Overall Academic Experience For Undergraduates” list also includes Yale, Princeton, Duke, MIT, Wellesley, Reed and Swarthmore. The Princeton Review’s rankings can be found here.

The Fiske Guide to Colleges 2004 notes that Bates provides students with a well-rounded liberal arts education. “Selective and unconventional, Bates attracts many of the nation’s brightest minds.”