Westmont Magazine Westmont Moves Up in Rankings

The most recent U.S. News & World Report rankings list Westmont among the top 100 liberal arts colleges in the country. The magazine classifies schools in four tiers, with the best being in the first. Named as a national liberal arts college in the late 1980s, Westmont started out in the fourth tier. In 2000, the college moved into the third tier, ranked roughly between 110th and 160th out of 217 institutions. This year, it is 97th.

U.S. News & World Report uses a number of factors to achieve its rankings, among them national reputation, (determined by the assessments of college administrators); retention (the percentage of students who graduate and the percentage who return after their first year); student selectivity (ACT and SAT scores as well as other factors); faculty and financial resources; and alumni giving rates.,/p>

Westmont’s students are exceptional scholars. Over the past three years, SAT scores of first-year students have averaged 1230, and their grade-point average has been 3.84.

In addition, giving by Westmont graduates has doubled in the past five years, increasing from 18 percent in 1997-1998 to 36 percent in 2002-2003.

Only eight other institutions in California appear in the top two tiers of the national liberal arts listings in U.S. News & World Report. They include: Occidental, Pomona, Claremont-McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Scripps, Pitzer, Mills and Thomas Aquinas.