Market your university, not just to prospective students, but also to peer institutions. Twenty-five percent of the U.S. News & World Report rankings are determined by peer evaluations. This means that presidents, provosts and deans of admission will be evaluating the academic programs at your university on a five-point scale. Make sure your university is well represented at intercollegiate meetings and functions. Schools cannot rank you highly if they do not remember anything about you.
Keep students happy and ensure that they graduate. Your university's retention rate makes up 20 percent of your overall ranking score. Within the retention category, 80 percent of the score is determined from freshmen retention rate, and 20 percent is determined by the percentage of students who graduate within six years of enrollment.
Recruit and pay highly regarded faculty well. The faculty resources category of the rankings make up 20 percent of the overall score. Class size, student-faculty ratio, faculty degrees, faculty salary and percentage of full-time faculty members all contribute to the faculty resources ranking.
Increase selectivity in admissions. The student selectivity category computes average test scores from the SAT and ACT for incoming students. Additionally, where students ranked in their high school class is also evaluated. Increasing the average profile of an incoming student in both test score and class ranking will help boost your university's ranking.
Make additional funds available for educating students. U.S. News & World Report determines an average amount of money spent per student for educational purposes. This does not include athletics, dorms or other non-academic resources. The higher the amount spent per student, the higher the ranking, which makes up 10 percent of the overall score.
Do everything possible to ensure students graduate within six years. While graduation rate is only 5 percent of the overall score, it is something that is looked at in peer evaluations, meaning a low graduation rate can hurt the peer evaluation score, which is worth 25 percent of the overall score.
Keep the alumni base happy. The alumni donation rate is only worth 5 percent of the overall ranking, but it is used as an indirect method of evaluating student satisfaction. The idea is that satisfied alumni will donate more money to their alma maters than unsatisfied students would. There are many methods to increase alumni donations. Some ideas include promoting funding projects, or tying donations to athletic ticket opportunities. While soliciting alumni for donations is time consuming, it's a major part of university fundraising.