Trinity College Maintains High Standing Among Top 50 Liberal Arts Colleges in U.S. News’ America’s Best Colleges

 HARTFORD, Conn., September 13, 2002.  For the second year in a row, Trinity College placed in the top ten of the nation’s most selective liberal arts colleges as reported by U.S. News and World Report in its 2003 edition of “America’s Best Colleges.”  Trinity posted the ninth lowest student acceptance rate, or ratio of students accepted to applicants, among comparable colleges.  Overall, Trinity ranked 25^th in the magazine’s top 50 ranking of the best liberal arts colleges in the nation.

Trinity’s continuing commitment to full-time faculty and faculty resources resulted in gains in the faculty categories in this year’s ranking. Its dedication to highly personalized instruction is reflected in the 9:1 faculty-student ratio, as well as in the fact that 70% of classes on campus have fewer than 20 students and only 3% of classes have over 50 students.

“Ranking in the top 10 in terms of student selectivity,” says Trinity’s new President Richard Hersh, “is consistent with our vision for creating a community of academically aspiring students. We provide them with a handcrafted education that nurtures individual growth and the development of competence and confidence. We want students who are as committed to that vision as we are.”

A staunch advocate for liberal arts education, Hersh contends: “Schools like Trinity College are in a position to showcase the true value of liberal arts by applying the intellectual, communication and social skills associated with liberal learning to their response to the changing needs of today’s undergraduate students. This spring we initiated an extraordinarily thorough curricular review, as well as a campus-wide dialogue with students, as part of an ongoing process to maintain and enhance an atmosphere of academic rigor and integrity. This kind of educational value assessment is more meaningful in the long run than one year’s guidebook ranking.”  

The Top 25 colleges essentially remained unchanged from last year, although the order and individual category ratings varied widely.  Some of these fluctuations can be attributed to changes in methodology. For example, the magazine uses class rank as a component of “selectivity” and overall ranking, and has chosen to impute values for missing high school class rank and test scores based on a different formula this year. Given that more and more private and public schools in the New England area are no longer giving class rank, this component will be increasingly problematic.

Trinity College is an independent, nonsectarian liberal arts college founded in 1823. One of the older colleges in America today, it is consistently ranked among the nation’s best.

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