(Posted September 29, 2008)

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Juniata College, which has been highly rated in more than a dozen college guides and magazine rankings, has been included in the 2009 Fiske Guide to Colleges, a well-respected publication that has rated the nation's top colleges for more than 25 years.


Edited by Edward B. Fiske, a former education editor for the New York Times, the guide gives thumbnail portraits of hundreds of colleges and universities. The entries for each institution are peppered with comments and quotes from students attending each school.

"Inclusion in the Fiske Guide is a sought-after honor for all colleges and universities and Juniata is proud to be included in its latest edition. The fact that Juniata is mentioned and praised in so many of these respected polls and guides shows that our approach to education is being noticed across the country."

Thomas Kepple, president of Juniata College. "


"Inclusion in the Fiske Guide is a sought-after honor for all colleges and universities and Juniata is proud to be included in its latest edition," says Thomas Kepple, president of Juniata College. "The fact that Juniata is mentioned and praised in so many of these respected polls and guides shows that our approach to education is being noticed across the country."


Juniata also remains in the top 100 liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News & World Report poll. The weekly news magazine rated Juniata College 98th in the first tier of its 2008 rankings of the best liberal arts college in the nation, according to the publication's issue "America's Best Colleges." The college was 97th last year. There are 217 liberal arts colleges included in the survey.


Last year, Juniata joined other liberal arts colleges who are members of the Annapolis Group, a consortium of liberal arts colleges, in boycotting the reputational ratings portion of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings.


According to guidelines established by the Carnegie Foundation and adopted by U.S. News, institutions that award at least 50 percent of their undergraduate degrees in liberal arts are defined as liberal arts schools. There are more than 200 liberal arts colleges, comprising four tiers.

In a brand-new ratings poll, forbes.com, the online companion to the business magazine Forbes, rated Juniata 113th out of 569 colleges and universities across the country. The national poll rates all institutions, regardless of size and enrollment.

The Forbes survey bases 25 percent of its overall score on the 7 million student evaluations of courses and professors on the Web site RateMyProfessors.com, and 25 percent of the total score on how many alumni (adjusted for enrollment) are listed in "Who's Who in America." The remaining 50 percent of the ratings score is based on the average amount of student debt at graduation, the percentage of students graduating in four years and the number of students or faculty who have won nationally competitive awards such as Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes.


Juniata also is one of just 40 colleges featured in the increasingly popular college guidebook "Colleges That Change Lives," by another former New York Times education editor, Loren Pope. Pope's book, which was recently updated in a new edition, was highlighted last year in an issue of Time magazine and in the New York Times.


Juniata also was chosen as one of the nation's best institutions for undergraduate education, according to the Princeton Review, the New York-based company known for its education, admission and test-prep services. Juniata is one of 368 institutions featured in the 2009 edition of the Princeton Review annual college guide "The Best 368 Colleges."


Just 15 percent of the four-year colleges in America and two Canadian colleges were chosen for the book. It has two-page profiles of the schools and student survey-based ranking lists of top 20 colleges in more than 60 categories.

Juniata also garnered favorable ratings for its athletics program. The program has been ranked 55th in Division III, 60th overall, in the sixth annual National Collegiate Scouting Association Collegiate Power Rankings. The NCSA's rankings are an average of each school's finish in the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) Directors' Cup, its NCAA graduation rate, and its ranking in the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Juniata was one of only nine Division III schools from Pennsylvania on the list. Joining the Eagles were Haverford College (13th), Carnegie Mellon (27th), Franklin & Marshall College (59th), Gettysburg College (61st), Dickinson College (68th), Swarthmore College (73rd), Ursinus College (77th), and Muhlenberg College (88th).

Juniata College has an enrollment of 1,460 students and has a student-to-faculty ratio of 13 to 1. The college has 99 full-time faculty members. About 91 percent of the faculty have earned doctorates or hold a terminal degree in their academic field.



Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.