The Mason Spirit

For the second year in a row, Mason was ranked one of the top 100 North and Latin American universities by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. The analysis is conducted annually by Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Institute of Higher Education. 

Universities are ranked by several indicators of academic or research performance. These include the number of alumni and staff members who have won Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals; the prevalence of highly cited researchers; the number of faculty articles published in the journals Nature and Science; and the frequency with which articles are indexed in major citations indices.

In addition, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine has named Mason to its national top 100 Best Values in Public Colleges 2009–10 list for the third straight year. Mason is ranked 64th for in-state students and 95th for out-of-state students.

Kiplinger’s bases the rankings of public colleges on “a combination of academics and affordability.” Measures of academic quality cited are SAT or ACT scores, admission and retention rates, student-faculty ratios, and four- and six-year graduation rates.

Mason’s MFA in Creative Writing Program also has won kudos. Recently, it was ranked number 37 of the top 50 writing programs in the country by Poets and Writers magazine.