EMU ranked among Best Regional Universities by U.S. News & World Report

by EMU Communications

Eastern Mennonite University is ranked among the Best Regional Universities in the South and has earned additional accolades in the U.S. News and World Report 2022-2023 Best Colleges list.

EMU tied for 34th out of 136 universities in the Southeast region, and fourth among Virginia universities in the same category. Regional universities are defined as offering a broad scope of undergraduate degrees and some graduate programs, but few, if any, doctoral programs. 

EMU also earned two more rankings:

  • For Best Value, which combines a school’s academic quality, as indicated by its 2021 U.S. News Best Colleges ranking, and the 2019-2020 net cost of attendance for a student who received the average level of need-based financial aid.
  • For Social Mobility, by enrolling and graduating large proportions of disadvantaged students awarded with Pell Grants. The vast majority of these federal grants are awarded to students whose adjusted gross family incomes are under $50,000. 

“Rankings don’t always capture what we know our alumni value about their experience here at EMU — relationships with our professors, unique experiences in and out of the classroom, and the emphasis on learning to live and lead together in community,” said Scott Barge, vice president for institutional research. “Still, we value this recognition and know others in our community do as well.”

The publication released the rankings on Sept. 12. 

For its 38th annual rankings, U.S. News and World Report collected data from 1,850 colleges and universities. Only 1,500 of those institutions garnered rankings, after consideration of academic quality and outcome measures, such as graduation rates, retention rates and social mobility, according to its press release. 

The annual U.S. News and World Report rankings top the following list of recognitions: