UNLV sees no progress in U.S. News study

Jennifer Knight

Friday, Aug. 22, 2003 | 10:29 a.m.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is hovering around the same level of achievement for the third year in a row, according to this year's U.S. News & World Report college rankings.

The news magazine's guidebook, which is out today, assigned UNLV an overall score of 2.4 out of a possible 5.0 -- which placed it in the bottom one-third of its category. UNLV received the same score in the 2001 and 2002 editions of the guidebook.

U.S. News derives each school's overall score from seven measures, including peer assessment, average freshman retention rate, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving and graduation rate.

The university didn't do as well this year in the number of freshmen who stayed in school or in the rate of selectivity the university used during admissions.

This year UNLV retained 73 percent of its freshmen, compared with last year's 77 percent, according to the report.

The school also admitted 82 percent of all students who applied, compared with 79 percent in 2002.

UNLV officials said this year's lower freshman retention rate could be due to more students going from full-time status to part time.

Ray Alden, UNLV's executive vice president and provost, said when the economy stays depressed students often take on more hours at work and fewer hours at school.

"Those kinds of Ivy League characteristics that are measured in this report are not the kinds of things that a very rapidly growing, open enrollment institution with a higher number of part-time students are going to do well in," Alden said. "It does sound like we are about the median as far as academic reputation, so I'm not worried about it."

Exclusive private schools do well in the rankings because selectivity is one factor that is measured. Institutions like Harvard can boast about their admissions rates, some as low as 11 percent, while UNLV, an open admissions public university, doesn't have that luxury.

The freshmen who entered UNLV last year did slightly better in some measures this year than others. About 19 percent of UNLV's freshmen class scored in the top 10 percent of their high school class, compared with last year's 20 percent. The average SAT test score fell between 910 and 1130, compared with last year's range of 880 to 1130.

UNLV was lumped in with 249 other "fourth-tier" doctoral-granting institutions in the report, with the highest scoring schools in its class being Indiana University-Purdue at Indianapolis and San Diego State University, both with scores of 2.8. The University of Nevada, Reno scored a 2.5 in the rankings.

Harvard and Princeton tied this year as the nation's top universities and Yale ran a close second.

Last year UNLV President Carol Harter established a goal for UNLV of becoming a premier research institution in the West on par with the University of California, Los Angeles, which ranked No. 26 in the nation among doctoral universities in the U.S. News report.