SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — U.S. News & World Report’s 2017 America’s Best Colleges guide has ranked Seton Hall University among the top tier of national universities, and put the school on its list of “A Plus Schools for B Students.”
For 2017, Seton Hall’s ranking rose for the sixth consecutive year to 118th among the nation’s four-year public, private and for-profit national universities. In 2016, Seton Hall was ranked 123rd.
The 2011 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s America’s Best Colleges guide, which marked the beginning of A. Gabriel Esteban’s tenure as president of Seton Hall, ranked the university at 136th. Since then, Seton Hall University has risen 18 places in the ranking.
During Esteban’s tenure, Seton Hall has enrolled its largest undergraduate classes in four decades while dramatically increasing student selectivity: The average SAT scores of incoming freshman have increased more than 100 points, with this latest incoming class marking the highest SAT average ever recorded at Seton Hall. With the class of 2020, Seton Hall saw the largest applicant pool in its 160-year history with more than 15,000 seeking admission for a class that numbered approximately 1,250. This year, the percentage of students who are Pell eligible rose to 28 percent. The class remains racially diverse, with 45 percent self-identifying as students of color vs. 34 percent a decade ago. Geographically, 34 percent of SHU’s students are from out-of- state with California as the second largest out-of-state market after New York.
Over the same time period, the university has made significant investments in infrastructure, spending nearly $135 million in the past seven years in campus facility upgrades and new buildings. Recently, Seton Hall, in partnership with Hackensack Meridian Health, launched the only private medical school in New Jersey and a College of Communication and the Arts.
“Seton Hall continues to rise as one of the nation’s leading national Catholic universities,” Esteban said in a press release. “We are proud that U.S. News once again has recognized our university for its academic excellence. The quality of our students continues to rise, our faculty continues to garner national and international acclaim for its scholarship and research, and now the world is beginning to recognize what great minds can do here at Seton Hall.”
In addition to being recognized as a “First Tier National University” by U.S. News & World Report, Seton Hall has again been named among the “Best Colleges in the Nation” by The Princeton Review and as a “top value” in higher education in a number of other national rankings, including Forbes, Money magazine and Washington Monthly.
Seton Hall was also named again to U.S. News & World Report’s list of “A Plus Schools for B Students,” featuring the top 100 national universities for students that are “trapped in the GPA of a B student” and whose “heart is set on a great college,” according to the magazine.
“The university is committed to academic excellence and providing an outstanding educational value for our students,” Alyssa McCloud, SHU’s vice president for enrollment management, said in the release. “In addition to our significant investments in campus infrastructure, faculty and academic programming, we invest heavily in the success of our students. Seton Hall is providing over $83 million in financial aid to students this year and approximately 98 percent of undergraduate students will receive direct aid from the university. This continued recognition from U.S. News validates the tremendous progress Seton Hall has made in recent years.”
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