Cal Poly Number One in New Carnegie Ranking

Cal Poly has been named the best regional university in the west in a new survey by Carnegie Communications.

The ranking included public and private universities and was based on a 2003 survey of nearly 4,000 college-bound students from across the United States.

The ranking was part of “Project Connect 2003,” a project of Carnegie Communications, a private media company based in Boston which publishes more than 30 annual magazines, books and other publications aimed at college-bound high school students, led by its flagship publication Private Colleges & Universities.
"The number-one ranking in the Carnegie report tells us more student than ever consider Cal Poly a top choice in their college decision process. It’s another tribute to our outstanding faculty, students and staff," said Cal Poly Assistant Vice President for Admissions, Recruitment and Finance James Maraviglia.

Students surveyed by Carnegie ranked Cal Poly as the best university in the west, public or private. Cal Poly is currently ranked as the number five university in the west in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of public and private universities in the region, a spot the University has held since 1999.

In its category of best public, largely undergraduate universities in the west, U.S. News & World Report currently lists Cal Poly as the best, a position it has held for 11 consecutive years.

Carnegie Communications launched the 2003 survey to determine the influence of established annual media rankings of U.S. colleges in determining which universities students actually apply to. The media company also sought data on whether criteria used by other studies – most notably U.S. News & World Report – match criteria used by students.

Carnegie’s report says when selecting colleges to apply to, high school students give more weight to low student-to-faculty ratios, college’s “peer assessment” (a college’s reputation as judged by other colleges), average SAT/ACT scores of enrolling students, proportion of faculty who are full-time teachers, and four-year graduation rate than they do traditional ranking studies.

In Carnegie Communication’s list of top five public or private universities in the west, Cal Poly was followed by Gonzaga University in Washington; California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; Loyola Marymount University; and Trinity University in Texas.

In Carnegie’s ‘National University’ list, students ranked Yale first, followed by Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Duke universities. The survey and rankings can be found online at www.carnegiecomm.com/.

Contact: James Maraviglia (805) 756-2913