August 17, 2004
FINDING THE BEST COLLEGES: new ranking developed to include academics, athletics and student-athlete graduation rates of collegiate programs CHICAGO, IL --- The latest campus rankings by the Sears Cup and U.S. News and World Report place schools like Princeton, Yale, Middlebury and Assumption College among the top academic and athletic institutions in the nation. On the heals of this study, a Chicago-based organization has taken one step further. The National Collegiate Scouting Association, a scouting service that is designed to help student-athletes identify and assess the colleges they are best suited for based on athletic and academic factors, compiled a list of the top colleges/universities in country based on academic and athletics standards. N.C.S.A. took the sum of every level of N.C.A.A. and N.A.I.A. program's Sears Cup rank, U.S. News rank and student-athlete graduation rank. They then divided the total number producing the first ever N.C.S.A. Power Rank. The power rank places schools like N.C.A.A. Division II Assumption College and N.C.A.A. Division III Middlebury College among the top 25 list of some of the most well known historically elite academic and athletic universities in the nation. The Sears Cup was introduced in 1993-94 as a ranking system to evaluate athletics departments of N.C.A.A. and N.A.I.A. programs, while the U.S. News assists in the same effort by highlighting schools with outstanding examples of academic programs. N.C.S.A. President/CEO Chris Krause, a former full scholarship linebacker at Vanderbilt University founded N.C.S.A. in April, 2000 with the objective to student-athletes to assist in finding the right college fit academically and athletically. These rankings, including the N.C.S.A. Power Rank, provide data that can allow prospective students and parents to evaluate the particular strengths of different universities based on academic and athletic factors. 1. Princeton 2. Harvard 3. Williams 4. Amherst 5. Yale 6. Dartmouth 7. Middlebury 8. Stanford 9. Brown 10. Georgetown 11. Penn 12. Notre Dame 13. Duke 14. Cornell 15. Bowdoin 16. M.I.T. 17. Rice 18. Washington, Mo. 19. Emory 20. Villanova 21. Columbia 22. Tufts 23. Johns Hopkins 24. Davidson 25. ASSUMPTION
