Three Maine colleges repeat as top 25 finishers in U.S. News rankings
File Photo / Renee Cordes
Bowdoin College, whose 207-acre campus in Brunswick is shown here, ranked No. 6 among the nation's liberal arts colleges.
While schools of higher education now seem to make headlines more for infection rates than graduation rates, a national ranking places three of Maine’s liberal arts colleges among the top 25 in the country.
Bates, Bowdoin and Colby colleges all made the grade in the prestigious U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges ranking, released Monday.
Among the three, Bowdoin ranked highest at No. 6, tied with Claremont McKenna College, in California, and the U.S. Naval Academy. Colby ranked No. 15 and Bates was No. 22 in the annual comparison, which this year evaluated more than 1,400 colleges and universities on 17 indicators of academic quality.
Bowdoin, in Brunswick, also ranked No. 6 last year. Colby, whose campus is in Waterville, previously ranked No. 11 and Bates, of Lewiston, had come in at No. 21. Each school has an enrollment of roughly 2,000 students.
College of the Atlantic, a Bar Harbor school with 350 students, placed No. 101 in the national ranking of liberal arts colleges.
Statistics used to calculate rankings include average ACT and SAT scores of admitted students, student-faculty ratios, graduation rates and more. But the 2021 analysis, conducted by the U.S. News & World Report magazine for the 36th year, doesn’t reflect the impact of the current public health crisis, since the information used predates the pandemic.
"The pandemic has affected students across the country, canceling commencement ceremonies and switching classes from in person to remote," Kim Castro, editor and chief content officer of U.S. News, said in a press release. "Whether students have slightly altered their college plans or changed them entirely, it remains our mission to continue providing students and their families with the tools they need to help find the right school for them."
Other Maine schools also fared well in the rankings, which often serve as a sort of report card in student recruitment and marketing efforts.
Among what U.S. News called “regional” colleges in the North, Maine Maritime Academy, in Castine, ranked No. 4; the University of Maine at Farmington was No. 6; and Unity College, in Unity, placed No. 11.
The University of Maine, the Orono flagship of the state's public university system, came in at No. 206 in the national university rankings. The University of New England, with campuses in Biddeford and Portland, was No. 249.
Princeton University was No. 1 in that national ranking, and Williams College, in Massachusetts, ranked No. 1 among the country's liberal arts colleges.
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