Hoot! Hoot!
Rice rises to top of new ranking of Texas colleges and universities
If Texas had one Ivy League school, it would have to be Rice University.
Time after time, the Houston school ranks as the best college or university in Texas and one of the best in the country. Personal finance website WalletHub just added to Rice’s accolades with a No. 1 ranking in Texas and a No. 6 ranking nationally among colleges and universities.
In Texas, Rice appears at No. 1 for admission rate, graduation rate, gender and racial diversity, and post-school median salary. Not every ranking is that stellar, though. Rice ranks 50th for on-campus crime among 55 Texas schools and 52nd for net cost.
More students soon will be able to take advantage of Rice’s top-tier education. In March, the school said it would enlarge its undergraduate enrollment by 20 percent — to 4,800 — by the fall of 2025, up from more than 4,200 in the fall of 2020.
In a news release, Robert Ladd, chairman of the Rice Board of Trustees, called expansion of the student body “a strategic imperative.”
“Expanding the student body now will also expand Rice’s future alumni base across the nation and around the world,” he added. “Welcoming more students to the Rice campus today will have an impact on the university for generations to come.”
Elsewhere on the WalletHub list, the University of Houston lands at No. 10 within Texas and No. 238 in the country.
To determine the top-performing schools, WalletHub compared more than 1,000 institutions in the U.S. across 30 key measures, including student-to-faculty ratio, graduation rate, and post-school median salary.
Here are the top 15 colleges and universities in Texas, according to WalletHub, along with their national rankings:
- Rice University, No. 6 nationally.
- University of Texas at Austin, No. 45 nationally.
- Trinity University in San Antonio, No. 61 nationally.
- Texas A&M University in College Station, No. 127 nationally.
- Southwestern University in Georgetown, No. 144 nationally.
- University of Dallas, No. 152 nationally.
- Southern Methodist University in University Park, No. 178 nationally.
- Austin College in Sherman, No. 192 nationally.
- LeTourneau University in Longview, No. 231 nationally.
- University of Houston, No. 238 nationally.
- University of Texas at Dallas, No. 252 nationally.
- Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, No. 253 nationally.
- Baylor University in Waco, No. 357 nationally.
- Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, No. 375 nationally.
- Southwest Adventist University in Keene, No. 407 nationally.
