MIT is tied with the California Institute of Technology as the fifth best national university in the US News & World Report's annual edition of "America's Best Colleges."
MIT, moving up a notch from its 1991 ranking, received an overall score of 98.8, out of a possible 100, as did Caltech. MIT and Harvard, which was rated as the leading national university, were the only ones to receive top ratings of "1" for academic reputation.
The 204 national universities in the poll were ranked according to a system that combined statistical data (student selectivity, acceptance rate, SAT/ACT scores, student/faculty ratio, graduation and retention rate, etc.) with the results of a survey of academic reputations among 2,527 responding college presidents, deans and admissions directors.
The magazine's 10 top-rated universities, in order, were: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Caltech and MIT (tied), Dartmouth, Duke, Chicago and Columbia.
A version of this article appeared in the September 30, 1992 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 37, Number 8).
