UCLA has placed sixth in a national ranking of colleges and universities intended to measure service in the public interest.
The Washington Monthly 2015 College Guide and Rankings, released today, assesses institutions based on social mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and awarding doctoral degrees) and service (encouraging students to give back to their country).
The survey considers universities’ predicted and actual graduation rates; the percentage of low-income students receiving federal aid; the percentage of all students who join the Peace Corps or ROTC, or engage in other community service; and the number of faculty receiving significant awards and elected to the national academies.
The top 5 were UC San Diego, UC Riverside, Texas A&M, UC Berkeley and Stanford.
In a related ranking, UCLA placed fifth in Washington Monthly’s ranking of “Best Bang for the Buck Western Colleges,” which includes schools from 13 states.
The magazine considers student loan default rate, predicted and actual graduation rate, the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants and how much students pay for college after grants and scholarships when determining this ranking.
Regardless of methodology, UCLA consistently places strong in a wide range of national and international rankings. This month, Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked UCLA second among U.S. public institutions and No. 12 overall. UCLA was also ranked second among U.S. public institutions in London’s Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings and No. 12 overall among the top 400 universities worldwide in its World University Rankings.
