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Recent Rankings Find SLU Leading in Undergraduate Education, Value

Saint Louis University is one of the nation’s best values in higher education, according the 2019 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Rankings released Sept. 10. U.S. News also ranked four undergraduate business programs in the top-50 and recognized SLU for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Outdoor Classrom

Students in an outdoor classroom. File photo

Noted for Value

This year, Saint Louis University ranked No. 36 on the list of “Best Value Schools” among more than 300 national universities. U.S. News calculates value by comparing a school's academic quality vs. the net cost of attendance for a student who received the average level of need-based financial aid.

Affordability is a major priority for Saint Louis University. In 2017, 98 percent of incoming freshman students at SLU received some form of financial assistance and more than 40 percent graduate free of student loan debt.

SLU’s efforts to enhance affordability have been bolstered by the success of its scholarship matching program, Go Further, which has raised more than $39.5 million in matching dollars, with most of the funding designated for low-income, first-generation students.

In August, LendEdu, a financial services organization that specializes in student lending, released a report noting that SLU’s 2017 graduating class carries the lowest level of student loan debt compared to similar grads from other private and public universities in Missouri.

Top-Ranked Programs

In the overall 2019 U.S. News rankings for undergraduate education, SLU was ranked No. 106, placing it among the top third of all national universities ranked by the publication.

SLU was ranked for No. 26 for the best undergraduate teaching among national universities, a ranking introduced this year and based on surveys of top college officials. SLU was tied with Georgetown, Northwestern, Tufts and American universities on the new listing.

Four undergraduate programs in the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business made the top 50 for 2019:

Overall, the Chaifetz School was ranked No. 87 among nearly 500 business schools in the country. The school got a major boost in February when it was announced that alumnus and trustee Richard A. Chaifetz, Ph.D., was donating $15 million to support business education at SLU.

Undergraduate engineering programs in SLU’s Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology were ranked No. 146 among all universities whose highest engineering degree offered is a doctorate.

In terms of graduate and professional programs, U.S. News in March ranked the School of Law's health law program No. 1 for the 14th year. Four programs in the Chaifetz School ranked in the top 30, while the School of Nursing’s master’s program ranked among the top 50 of more than 500 programs nationally.

National Honors from Niche

Niche – a website that ranks colleges, schools, neighborhoods and companies – ranked SLU as the No. 8 Catholic university in United States and the No. 2 university in Missouri among both private and public institutions in the state.

Other top-50 national rankings from Niche are:

Niche’s 2019 College Rankings were released Aug. 27. The website evaluated more than 1,000 schools, using data from the U.S. Department of Education, as well as more than 30 million college reviews and survey responses from students.

Top Rankings from the Princeton Review

SLU was again named one of the best colleges in America by the Princeton Review, in the Best 384 Colleges: 2019 Edition published on Aug. 7. The organization’s rankings are based on surveys of more than 138,000 students at all 384 institutions.

In the influential guidebook, SLU was named the No. 1 school for community service and was No. 5 on a list of “Impact Schools,” reflecting student responses to questions about service opportunities, student government, sustainability efforts and on-campus student engagement

The Princeton Review also named SLU one of the nation’s best values higher education in its accompanying “Colleges That Pay You Back” guide.

Learn More About SLU's Rankings and Honors