Santa Clara University

2007 Santa Clara University Rankings

Institutional

U.S. News & World Report:

• No. 2 comprehensive university in the West for the 18th consecutive year.
• With 93 percent of freshmen returning to enroll in their sophomore year, the University holds the highest   average freshman retention rate of master’s universities in the West.
• Average graduation rate for undergraduates, 85 percent, is the second highest in the country among 574 national master’s level universities
• Listed among the top 15 in the “Great Schools, Great Prices” category of master’s universities in the West.
• Residential learning communities are featured in a section titled “Programs to Look For,” highlighting programs where students in residence halls take some courses as a group to get to know professors and one another better.
• Santa Clara earns the second-highest peer assessment score—4.0—of master’s universities in the West.

Princeton Review:

• Santa Clara University is one of the Princeton Review’s Best Colleges.

Leavey School of Business

U.S. News & World Report:

• Part-time MBA program is ranked No. 14 among part-time MBA programs in the nation. SCU has been listed in the top 20 MBA programs every year since the   part-time rankings began in 1995.

Business Week:

• The undergraduate program at the Leavey School of Business is ranked No. 27 in the United States, the first time that the undergraduate business program made the rankings. SCU was third among California schools listed, with UC Berkeley at No. 3 and the University of Southern California at No. 19.

School of Law

U.S. News & World Report:

• The School of Law is named one of the top 100 law schools in the nation.
• The intellectual property law program is recognized as one of the top 10 nationally.
• The School is noted as one of the 10 most diverse in the country.

School of Engineering

U.S. News & World Report:

• The School of Engineering is No. 20 among the top 87 engineering schools in the country that focus on undergraduate and master’s engineering programs.

2006 Santa Clara University Recognitions

Highlights

• New York Times: In July 2006, the New York Times named SCU one of the 20 colleges worth a visit, calling it “the Georgetown of the West Coast.”
• Santa Clara University ranks as one of the best places to work in the Bay Area, at No.11 in the “big companies” category (501 to 3,000 employees). SCU is the only higher education institution in the top 15. The rankings are a joint project of San Francisco Business Times, Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, East Bay Business Times, and Deloitte.
• In the October 2006 issue of Men’s Fitness magazine, Santa Clara University was named one of the “Fittest Colleges in America.” SCU was ranked No. 16 on the magazine's “fit list,” which included 25 of the fittest colleges and universities in the country.

Student Profile

• The average SAT score for the entering freshman class is over 1200 (combined) and the average high school GPA is 3.58.
• SCU’s freshman retention rate is 93 percent, and has been above 90 percent for the past 17 years.
• SCU’s graduation rate for undergraduates is third highest in the nation among master’s level universities. Among SCU students, 82 percent graduate in four years; 83 percent graduate in five years; 85 percent graduate in six years.
• Of the Class of 2005, 89 percent of students who applied for full-time graduate study were admitted to at least one graduate program and 98 percent of those attending graduate school indicated that their SCU education provided them with excellent or good preparation for graduate study. Of those admitted to full-time graduate study, 32 percent were granted one or more fellowships, teaching assistantships, and/or research assistantships.

Additional honors:

• The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching chose SCU as a pilot site in 2006 for a new category within the foundation’s Classification of Institutions of Higher Education: institutions committed to community engagement.
• In February, in an unprecedented move by NASA, total control of the GeneSat-1 satellite was given to SCU engineering students. GeneSat-1, which is still operating in orbit, is a project that SCU students and scientists at NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, California, have been working on for years. The mission of this satellite is to validate the use of advanced  instrumentation and autonomous control techniques for performing fundamental biological studies in space.  SCU students, faculty, and staff developed the entire command and control system for GeneSat-1 and have performed all mission control operations for the satellite since it was launched in December 2006. They also made significant contributions to the design and test of the satellite itself. In addition to performing experiments for NASA, SCU is using the satellite as an experimental test bed for graduate-level research in advanced diagnostic techniques. This work is helping SCU students, faculty, and staff prepare to operate the upcoming NASA PharmaSat mission, scheduled to launch in 2008.