Wheaton ranks near top

College on lists for quality education, affordability, inclusiveness

Wheaton in fall 2022 received several accolades from Money magazine, The Princeton Review and U.S. News & World Report for its high-quality affordable liberal arts education that leads to successful careers for graduates. The rankings in particular recognized the college’s state-of-the-art laboratories, its equity in providing access to opportunity, as well as its inclusive community.

Money magazine included Wheaton in its Best Colleges in America 2022 in the No. 40 spot on the Best Liberal Arts Colleges list. Money’s Best Colleges in America 2022 ranks colleges by value to find schools that combine quality, affordability and outcomes, according to its website. The 2022 rankings were compiled by examining 671 four-year colleges that met several requirements, including having sufficient data and above-average graduation rates for analysis. Twenty-four factors in the three categories were then considered.

The quality category focuses on graduation rates. Affordability considers the net price of a degree, student and parent borrowing, and loan repayment rates. Outcomes takes into account median earnings, the share of alumni working and the share of alumni earning more than a high school graduate.

The Princeton Review’s The Best 388 Colleges: 2023 Edition included Wheaton on its overall list and also placed Wheaton No. 16 nationwide for Best Science Lab Facilities and No. 21 for being LGBTQ-Friendly.

The Princeton Review rankings are based on 160,000 surveys that asked students to rate their professors, administrators, school services and other aspects of life at their colleges and to report on their campus and community experiences.

Wheaton earned multiple accolades in the U.S. News & World Report 2022–2023 Best Colleges rankings that were announced Sept. 12, 2022. The college is ranked No. 89 nationally among liberal arts colleges.

Wheaton is included on the lists as a Best Value Liberal Arts College (No. 64) and among the Top Performers for Social Mobility (No. 81). The latter ranking measures the extent schools enrolled and graduated students who received federal Pell Grants. (Usually, the students come from lower-income households.)

Wheaton also made the list of A-plus schools for B students, which notes colleges with strong rankings that accept students who have a range of test scores and GPAs. Wheaton has been a test optional school for more than 30 years.

A guide for prospective students and their families, the latest rankings assess nearly 1,500 U.S. bachelor’s degreegranting institutions on 17 measures of academic quality. To calculate the rankings, U.S. News & World Report “focuses on academic quality and places emphasis on outcome measures—including graduation rates, retention rates, graduate indebtedness and social mobility. Outcomes are the mostly highly weighted ranking factor,” according to a media release.

—Sandy Coleman