UM Receives High Ranking in New York Times College Access Ranking Tool

October 31, 2023

The University of Montevallo receives high rankings among Alabama colleges according to the New York Times Build Your Own College Rankings online tool.

Created earlier this year ahead of the New York Times College-Access Index, this interactive tool allows students and parents to rank what qualities of a college are most important to them — athletics, low tuition price, diversity, etc. — and provides a list of schools that best matches their priorities. Users can also filter the options by region, state, size, admission rate and more. This helps students meet their individual needs and goals, places value on their opinions about college and offers a contrast to one-size-fits-all college ranking lists that traditionally favor big-name schools.

On the web page, students use slider tools to measure how important each of the following characteristics are to them in the college selection process:

• High earnings: Median income 10 years after attendance
• Economic mobility: More students start low-income and end up high-income
• Low sticker price: Listed price of tuition, fees and housing
• Low net price: Average price for students with financial aid and grants
• Academic profile: Graduation rate, SAT/ACT scores and student-faculty ratio
• Athletics: Student surveys, team performance and revenue
• Party scene: Based on data and student surveys
• Campus safety: Based on data and student surveys
• Racially diverse: Racial composition of the undergraduate population
• Economically diverse: Household income of the students attending each college

UM placed in the top five in Alabama for half of the categories – second for low sticker price, third for low net price and fourth for racial diversity, economic diversity and campus safety.

The tool uses data from the U.S. Department of Education via the National Center for Education Statistics and the College Scorecard, Niche.com and Opportunity Insights. The data is from the Department of Education unless noted otherwise. Only colleges and universities that meet the following criteria were included in the rankings:

• More than 50 percent of students graduated within eight years
• The school has data for at least three of the 10 measures used to weight the rankings
• More than 75 percent of the students are attending full-time

Excluded from the rankings tool are military colleges, maritime colleges, federal service academies, special focus colleges and online universities.

U.S. News & World Report recently ranked the University of Montevallo as one of the best colleges in the South in multiple categories for the 15th consecutive year, including No. 4 in the Best Value School in the South category.

Standardized test scores are currently not required for admission and the University has frozen tuition rates since 2018.

Learn more about the University of Montevallo at montevallo.edu.