According to the U.S News & World Report, Marquette University is ranked 18th among universities nationally in undergraduate teaching.
While Marquette’s undergraduate ranking increased, so did the ranking for the university. Marquette is now ranked 88th among universities nationally.
Jaeden Phillips, a first year in the College of Engineering, said he was impressed by how high Marquette was rated.
“As a private university, Marquette has very good academics as well as community. To be even placed in top 100 in national universities is crazy,” Phillips said in an email.
Roman de Guia, a first-year in the College of Health Sciences, agreed that Marquette was ranked highly, but not high enough.
“It has its share of amazing programs, clubs, sports, and people,” de Guia said in an email. “While other schools are ranked higher for more specific programs, I believe that the variety of great programs MU has to offer makes it a well-rounded university, and so it deserves a higher ranking.”
Alix Riley, director of institutional research at Marquette, explained why the university received such a high ranking this year compared to previous years.
“Marquette consistently outperforms expectations with regard to our graduation rate,” Riley said in an email. “Every year, U.S. News predicts the graduation rate of each nationally ranked university, using financial data and student characteristics, like test scores. Every year, Marquette exceeds that prediction, graduating more students than U.S. News expects we will.”
John Baworowsky, vice president for enrollment management, explained why Marquette deserved to be ranked 18th in the nation for undergraduate teaching.
“Marquette offers a student-centered quality Jesuit education in a terrific city,” Baworosky said in an email. “Our #18 ranking for best teaching is a wonderful external validation. Marquette is particularly strong in health sciences, drawing high achieving students to our nursing and health science programs. Marquette students have the opportunity to participate in meaningful research with their professors as well as high impact internships and co-op experiences.”
Tim Day, a sophomore in the College of Engineering, mentioned that the community and campus were some of the important factors he considered before choosing to attend Marquette.
“Originally, I just applied because I knew some people that went here and that they had a good engineering program. Once I visited, the campus community really drew me in,” Day said in an email.
The engineering program is ranked 119th, so that was one of the deciding factors for Phillips to attend Marquette.
“As far as academics the engineering program is looked at highly, and I knew it was something I would want to try,” Phillips said in an email.
De Guia added that he feels Marquette has done everything right despite the pandemic.
“I have not been here all that long, but Marquette has done everything it can to make the MU experience great during these times of the pandemic,” de Guia said in an email.
Marquette will experience a $15 million dollar budget cut loss due to the pandemic and having a 16% decrease in enrollment, but this will not impact its ranking.
“While it is early to venture the impacts of future budget cuts, our initial cuts were designed to minimize impact on the student experience,” Borowsky said in an email. “We don’t have an easy task ahead of us but we want Marquette to be an even stronger institution that is ready to support our future students with a very high quality education.”
Although Marquette’s rating has increased, Baworosky mentioned that improvements are still being made, such as giving out more scholarships to students that are not as fortunate as others.
“We have been improving our support services to make all our services successful,” Baworowsky said in an email. “President Lovell also recognized that our support of the City of Milwaukee could be strengthened with the addition of tuition scholarships for needy, city of Milwaukee students. We are taking his vision and expanding the Urban Scholars program to offer a Marquette education for a larger number of local students.”
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was ranked at 142nd.
“Marquette is the only university in the Milwaukee area ranked in the top 100 on the Best National University list,” Riley said in an email.
This story was written by Natalija Mileusnic. She can be reached at [email protected]
