Seattle Pacific University Ranked as a ‘Best National University’

For the first time, Seattle Pacific University was ranked by the U.S. News and World Report’s Best National Universities list. 2016 was the university’s first eligible year, and Seattle Pacific was the only private university in the Pacific Northwest to make the list. The ranking was big news for SPU, which joined the University of Washington and Washington State University as the only three schools in Washington state.

The ‘Best National Universities’ list is a ranking that only considers schools that offer a full range of undergraduate majors plus masters and doctoral programs. In addition, to be considered a national university, the school has to be committed to producing groundbreaking research.

For the first time, SPU was eligible due to the growth of its graduate and doctoral programs in the fields of business, education, psychology, nursing and theology. According to a press release, other improvements that helped SPU make it onto the ranking included new advanced degrees in business and theology, digital education leadership, reconciliation and intercultural studies and doctoral nursing.

For the ranking, Seattle Pacific University tied for 159th. SPU offers more than 65 master’s, certificate, dual degrees and doctoral programs. The university scored well in student-faculty ratio (15:1) as well as the percentage of classes with fewer than 20 students (48.3 percent). SPU also received high scoring for need-based financial aid, with 70 percent of students receiving some help.

As for the ranking system, the U.S. News placed emphasis on graduation and retention rates (22.5 percent), undergraduate academic reputation (also 22.5 percent), faculty resources (20 percent), student selectivity (12.5 percent), financial resources (10 percent), graduation rate performance (7.5 percent) and alumni giving rate (5 percent). In total, more than 1,8000 colleges and universities submitted data for the ranking and 1,374 schools were included.

To learn more about the ranking and to see how else SPU stacked up to the competition, you can check out the full ranking here.

regions: Seattle

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