U.S. News College Rankings

Warning! This post will likely be a bit too "inside" for most readers of this blog... but this is what I'm thinking about this afternoon, and some may find it interesting.

As imperfect as they are, I'm looking over the U.S. News rankings today and noting that Northwest University cracked the top ten in their category, ranking #9 among regional colleges in the West.

Having invested 13 years in Northwest, I'm really gratified to see NU continuing to be recognized as a great place.

I remembered that I did some really rudimentary analysis a few years ago of peer schools, including a number of schools that "compete" with NU for students (we call them "crossapps" schools that also receive applications from our new students). I spent a few minutes and updated the rankings from the current report.

I think a lot of people think that Northwest "competes" most with other Assemblies of God schools, but the truth is that most crossapps are at schools that are in our region, and in more prestigious categories (those shaded in yellow above). Northwest continues to move up in the category, and it is hanging in there with national universities and regional universities.

As Merlin and I are looking forward to serving other organizations, I'm glad that we can point to experience like this... evidence that we've had a hand in greatifying a place like NU.