The U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) released their 2021 Best Liberal Arts Colleges list on Monday, Sept. 14, placing Hamilton College in ninth place out of 223 schools. Hamilton’s four way tie with Carleton College, Middlebury College, and Washington and Lee University is not only the highest placement in the school’s history, but also the first instance that it reached the top 10. This improvement reflects the positive trend of the past few years, as Hamilton has moved from 16 in 2019 to 14 in the 2020 rankings.

USNWR rankings are determined by data submitted in the prior academic year. As such, new admission information from the class of 2023 contributed to the updated 2021 list, in addition to knowledge acquired throughout the 2019–2020 school-year. Schools are profiled based on many factors, including their admission statistics, student-faculty ratio, and financial resources. Hamilton’s Institutional Research Office regularly submits the school’s data for these rankings.

According to USNWR reporters Robert Morse and Eric Brooks, the organization updated this methodology for determining the list this year, most notably being the two measures of student debt added to the “Outcomes” section of rankings. Within it, USNWR took into account both the average amount of accumulated federal loan debt among full-time undergraduate borrowers at graduation and the percentage of full-time undergraduates in a graduating class who took out federal loans. Overall, this change increased the section value from 35 percent to 40 percent, a measure, as explained by Morse and Brooks, to hold institutions accountable for the cost of college and for the availability of resources provided to students to pay for their education.

Morse and Brooks also noted a shift in the “Student Excellence” section, which includes factors of SAT and ACT scores and high school class standing, from 10 percent to seven percent. A similar decrease is true for the weight of the “Alumni Giving” section, which the organization minimized from five percent to three percent. These decreases made room for the two new measures of student indebtedness added to the “Outcomes” section.

According to Monica Inzer, Vice President for Enrollment Management at Hamilton, the increased weight given to outcomes and access to education might have impacted Hamilton’s growing recognition since the College cares deeply about both. Still, Inzer does not see the USNWR rankings as what truly defines Hamilton for applicants.

“This is one of many lists and rankings that prospective families may consult when building a list, but my hope is that they ultimately choose the short list of colleges to which they will apply based on the potential fit with what they are looking for,” wrote Vice President Inzer in an email. “We always encourage families to find their own measuring stick and hope that leads many of them to Hamilton, ranking or not!”