The University of Arizona has earned a place in The Princeton Review’s “The Best 386 Colleges: 2021 Edition,” receiving top scores in sustainability (95 out of a possible 100) and quality of life (87).
The university also scored well in the areas of financial aid (83) and fire safety (91).
The Princeton Review also publishes several top-20 ratings for various categories relating to academics and campus life. UArizona earned recognition in the best health services category (No. 14).
“The University of Arizona is proud to offer a world-class education alongside an incredible student experience,” said University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins. “I am glad to see this reflected not only with the rankings but also with so many positive comments from our students included in The Princeton Review.”
The rankings are based on data from The Princeton Review’s survey of 143,000 students at the 386 listed schools.
Students say that UArizona boasts a “large-school experience but with professors and staff who share the heart and care of a much smaller school.” Their instructors “work hard to make these classes meaningful, regardless of the medium” and “guest lecturers are brought into class to demonstrate their expertise and innovative (and) exciting projects.”
Survey respondents say UArizona’s student body is “made up of many different people from different backgrounds and places.” They add that the student population “feels eclectic,” with artists, athletes, mathematicians, researchers, performers, performancegoers and dedicated students young and old.”
The student survey has 85 questions across four areas:
Academics/administration at their school
Life at their college
Their fellow students
Themselves
Students answer by selecting one of five answer choices that range across a grid or scale. The answer choice headers might range from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” or “excellent” to “poor.”
The Princeton Review’s eight rating scores are based primarily on surveys of administrators at the schools who annually provide the publication with institutional data requested about their colleges.
A deep dive into the sample of rocks and dust returned from near-Earth asteroid Bennu by NASA’s University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission has revealed some long-awaited surprises.
Bennu contains the original ingredients that formed our solar system, the OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team found. The asteroid’s dust is rich in carbon and nitrogen, as well as organic compounds, all of which are essential components for life as we know it. The sample also contains magnesium sodium phosphate, which was as a surprise to the research team, because it wasn’t seen in the remote sensing data collected by the spacecraft at Bennu. Its presence in the sample hints that the asteroid could have splintered off from a long-gone, tiny, primitive ocean world.
Launched on Sept. 8, 2016, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer spacecraft, dubbed OSIRIS-REx, began its journey to near-Earth asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of rocks and dust from the surface. OSIRIS-REx was the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid. The spacecraft delivered the sample, weighing 4.3 ounces, or 121.6 grams, to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023.
“Finally having the opportunity to delve into the OSIRIS-REx sample from Bennu after all these years is incredibly exciting,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx and Regents Professor of planetary sciences in the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “This breakthrough not only answers longstanding questions about the early solar system but also opens new avenues of inquiry into the formation of Earth as a habitable planet. The insights outlined in our overview paper have sparked further curiosity, driving our eagerness to explore deeper.”
Lauretta is co-lead author of a paper published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science that details the nature of the asteroid sample. The paper also serves as an introduction to the Bennu sample catalog, an online resource where information about the sample is made publicly available and where scientists can request sample material for their own research.
“The publication of the first paper led by Dr. Lauretta and Dr. Connolly describing the Bennu sample is an exciting milepost for the mission and for the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory,” said Mark Marley, director of the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and head of the Department of Planetary Sciences. “Our faculty, scientists and students will continue to study the sample for years and decades to come. For now, we can only imagine the stories of the origins of our planet and the life upon it still to be told by the Bennu grains already in our laboratories.”
A ‘watery past’ for Bennu?
Analysis of the Bennu sample unveiled intriguing insights into the asteroid’s composition. Dominated by clay minerals, particularly serpentine, the sample mirrors the type of rock found at mid-ocean ridges on Earth, where material from the mantle, the layer beneath Earth’s crust, encounters water.
This interaction between ocean water and materials from the Earth’s mantle results in clay formation and gives rise to a variety of minerals including carbonates, iron oxides and iron sulfides. But the most unexpected discovery in the Bennu sample is the presence of water-soluble phosphates, Lauretta said. These compounds are components of biochemistry for all known life on Earth today.
A similar phosphate was found in the asteroid Ryugu sample delivered by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2 mission in 2020. But the magnesium sodium phosphate detected in the Bennu sample stands out for the lack of inclusions, which are like little bubbles of other minerals trapped within the rock, and the size of its grains, unprecedented in any meteorite sample, Lauretta said.
The finding of magnesium sodium phosphates in the Bennu sample raises questions about the geochemical processes that brought these elements together, and provides valuable clues about Bennu’s historic conditions.
“The presence and state of phosphates, along with other elements and compounds on Bennu, suggest a watery past for the asteroid,” Lauretta said. “Bennu potentially could have once been part of a wetter world. Although, this hypothesis requires further investigation.”
From a young solar system
Despite its possible history of interaction with water, Bennu remains a chemically primitive asteroid, with elemental proportions closely resembling those of the sun.
From bicycles to belt buckles, some of the American Southwest’s most iconic imagery can now be found in murals with eye-catching color on six walls along both sides of Speedway Boulevard near the University of Arizona.
Beautifying the roadway was a collaborative effort between the UArizona Poetry Center and Alley Cat Murals, a group of artists dedicated to restoring and revitalizing community spaces while facilitating public art opportunities for local muralists.
Installing murals along one of Tucson’s busiest streets came from the mind of Allison Miller, founder of Alley Cat Murals and a graduate student in theCollege of Education’s Humanizing and Culturally Affirming Teacher Program. Miller said she first recognized the series of walls – on Speedway between North Park Avenue and North Campbell Avenue – as having the potential for artwork in 2003, though it would remain just an idea for years as Miller’s creative process developed.
Her artistic journey began as a Tucson High School student under the tutelage of art teachers David Miller and Harold Gabitzsch. Thanks to them, Miller said she discovered the importance of “contributing to a healthy community” through art. After moving to New York City and earning a degree in sociology from Brooklyn College, Miller returned to Tucson in 2008 with a desire to contribute to her hometown.
“I think murals communicate to city residents that they are in a safe space that is cared for, and that they deserve beautiful things,” she said. “Public art is free. It’s for the people, by the people. It also empowers people to take ownership of their city and give back, civically. I am a happier person when I am being creative and giving back to society.”
Miller’s dedication to improving her community led to founding Alley Cat Murals in 2010. In addition to the recently completed Speedway corridor murals, the organization has worked with community institutions like Roskruge Bilingual K-8 Magnet School, Marguerite L. Collier Elementary School and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum to update or paint new public artwork.
In 2023, Miller had the opportunity to return to the series of walls that inspired her decades before. As she tried to raise money for the Speedway Boulevard murals, Miller found a common cause with the Poetry Center, part of the UArizona College of Humanities. Miller previously collaborated with the Poetry Center to paint murals for the center’s children’s reading corner.
The Poetry Center’s formal mission is to “advance a diverse and robust literary culture” for writers, readers and new audiences of poetry and other literary arts. While that mission statement provides a fixed goal for the institution, executive director Tyler Meier said the center’s day-to-day work is just as adaptive, varied and exciting as poetry itself.
“We feel enormously lucky to continually rethink and reimagine what the Poetry Center can and should be,” he said. “Our work isn’t fixed in many ways – just like poetry, arts and culture more broadly. We are always adapting, growing, anticipating and responding, and we regularly seek new relationships, collaborations and opportunities to meaningfully advance this work.”
To help connect Miller and the other artists with poetic inspiration, Poetry Center staff, including library director Sarah Kortemeier, delved into the center’s many shelves for inspiration.
“We prioritized poems with concrete visual imagery that could spark a lot of images in an artist’s mind,” Kortemeier said. “It is incredibly interesting to see what the artists did with those suggestions. The result is an incredibly diverse series of source texts as well as visual styles. It’s such a delight to see.”
In addition to lending creative support, the Poetry Center secured a $19,000 grant from the Southwestern Foundation for Education and Historical Preservation to fund the project.
Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Gretchen Evans served in the United States Army for 27 years until a rocket blast in Afghanistan brought her career to an abrupt end in 2006. At just 46 years old, Evans was left with near-total hearing loss, a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
After more than a year of rehabilitation, she struggled to find a new identity.
“It was a devastating shock to me,” Evans said. “I lost my career, my passion and purpose. In the beginning, it was a very rough transition, not just from the military to civilian world, but overcoming these injuries. I struggled with employment. I struggled connecting with other people. I fell into a very lonely depressive state.”
Relief finally came in the form of a service dog named Aura, a black Labrador retriever with “lovable brown eyes” with whom Evans was paired in 2015. Evans retired her four-legged friend to a more domestic life in her home five years later, at which time she was paired with her second dog, a golden retriever and black lab mix she likes to call “Rambunctious Rusty.”
Whether at home or on the road, Aura and Rusty alert Evans to people behind her and different noises such as doorbells, alarms or family members trying to get her attention. The dogs even allowed Evans to get back behind the wheel of a car, as they can alert and point in the direction of sounds like emergency vehicles.
“As soon as I got Aura and had her by my side, that really took away the fear of engaging with people and day-to-day life,” Evans said. “I didn’t feel like a deaf person anymore. I had working ears; they just so happened to have four legs and black fur. Aura opened so many doors and gave me my confidence back. And I was never lonely, because those dogs are your best battle buddy in the world.”
Improved patient outcomes
The benefits of service dogs for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder are well documented in personal stories like Evans’ but there is a lack of empirical research on the use of the animals as a medical intervention.
Researchers at the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine have taken a step toward better understanding the relationship between veterans and service dogs, which they believe could lead to life-changing improvements in health care for veterans.
In a new study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, researchers found that veterans who worked with service dogs experienced significantly lower self-reported and clinician-rated PTSD symptom severity, lower anxiety and depression, a significantly higher quality of life and fewer feelings of isolation. Veterans working with service dogs also had 66% lower odds of receiving a PTSD diagnosis from a mental health professional after three months with a dog.
The lack of data on service dogs as medical care has created challenges for veterans seeking treatment, said lead study author Sarah Leighton, a graduate student studying psychology and a member of the OHAIRE research group in the College of Veterinary Medicine. OHAIRE stands for The Organization for Human-Animal Interaction Research and Education.
Those challenges include limited funding for service dog nonprofits that rely on donations, medical insurance companies that do not fund service dog intervention, and legislative gaps in terms of protecting the civil rights of people with disabilities partnered with service dogs.
“We know that veterans with PTSD are struggling,” Leighton said. “Rates of death by suicide among veterans with PTSD are about one-and-a half times higher than civilian adults, and they also have very high rates of other conditions like depression and anxiety. We’re really seeking to identify complementary interventions that can support veterans with PTSD, and hopefully improve their outcomes.”
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental health problem some people develop “after experiencing or witnessing a life-threatening or traumatic event” and is slightly more common in veterans than in the general population. The number of veterans with PTSD varies by demographic, service era and available data, but The National Library of Medicine concludes that upwards of 23% of veterans experience PTSD during their lifetime. Symptoms can include flashbacks, nightmares and panic attacks. Suicide and thoughts of suicide are also closely linked to PTSD. A 2020 study by the Department of Veterans Affairs found the rate of suicide among veterans is nearly double that of the civilian population.
One doesn’t have to live in the Arizona desert long to learn that once the first cicadas of the year start broadcasting their piercing buzz from invisible locations in the trees, it’s time to kiss spring goodbye and say hello to the blast furnace that is June in much of the state.
University of Arizona News talked with Gene Hall, manager of the University of Arizona InsectCollection, about cicadas and what makes them so unique.
1. Cicadas stay underground for years and can emerge en masse.
Cicadas have made national headlines this year, appearing in massive numbers almost overnight in some parts of the eastern U.S. Meanwhile, Arizonans have yet to hear them.
“Cicada life cycles can range from three years for our local species to up to 17 years for those in the Midwest and eastern United States,” Hall says. “It is thought that these mass emergence events that you have seen in the news may have evolved as a strategy to deal with predators. I have read about estimates that some places see a million or so cicadas emerge per acre. And when you’ve got such large numbers of individual cicadas out, there’s just no way predators can keep up with that. It’s like survival by numbers in a way.”
“In the species we have around here (in Tucson), the underground stage lasts anywhere from a couple to three to five years,” Hall says. “We don’t have the big brooding cycles like periodical cicadas, and a reason for that might be that here in the Southwest, they can avoid predators simply by being out during the hottest part of the day, when nobody else can or wants to. Animals that otherwise would go after them, like lizards, birds and mammals, are trying to stay out of the heat.”
2. Built-in air con: Cicadas can turn themselves into an evaporative cooler.
Why are cicadas active during the hottest part of the day?
“Because they can,” Hall says. “Cicadas have figured out a way of sweating, if you will. They feed on plant sap, so they are constantly sucking in liquids, and as the temperature gets hotter and hotter, and they start to overheat, they remove the water from their blood and pass it through ducts in their body. As it exits their body through pores on their thorax, they get that continuous evaporative cooling. When people talk about how it seems like it just feels hotter when they hear the cicadas, that’s because they’re out when it is hot. That trick allows them to be active when it’s too hot for the predators that feed on them. Many reptiles and birds and mammals that would normally go after them seek shelter from the heat when it gets to be 110 degrees or more, but cicadas can still be active and feeding and sending out mating calls.”
3. Cicadas build stuff underground.
“The adult female lays her eggs into twigs,” Hall says. “When the eggs hatch, an immature stage – called a nymph –falls onto the ground, where it will then burrow. The nymph lives underground and feeds on plant roots with its piercing-sucking mouth parts, moving along chambers and tunnels that it digs with its strong, clawlike front legs. When it’s ready to molt into an adult, the nymph crawls out of the ground and looks for a surface to cling to, like the base of a tree or a building. It will then shed its final nymphal skin. The newly emerged adult will be pale and soft-bodied until the exoskeleton hardens, and then proceeds to live the remainder of its life. Like the nymphs, the adults possess piercing-sucking mouthparts and are plant feeders.”
4.Cicadas can make their own armor overnight.
Scientists believe nymphs emerge from underground when certain environmental cues fall into place and the conditions become just right –for example, as soon as the ground reaches a certain temperature, Hall says.
“They emerge usually in the evenings or at night, and the next day you might find their nymphal skin where they’ve emerged from,” he says. “They’re very vulnerable when they emerge, because the body of the adult starts out soft. It takes a while to harden up and for the wings to fully push out and develop. It probably takes a few hours. It can’t be too long because they have to be active the next morning. The adult lives only for two to three weeks, which is kind of typical for most insects.”
The University of Arizona earned recognition across several categories in the 2024 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges ranking, released Monday.
The university’s undergraduate program for management information systems, housed within the Eller College of Management, rose two spots to No. 3 overall and No. 2 among public universities. On the publication’s annual Best Graduate Schools list, released April 25, U.S. News ranked the MIS master’s program No. 1 among public universities and No. 3 overall.
In U.S. News & World Report’s Best National Universities ranking, UArizona is tied for No. 115 overall and tied for No. 58 among public universities. The university is No. 14 among all colleges and universities that are designated as Hispanic-Serving Institutions and No. 25 among state flagship universities. UArizona’s overall score of 62 is a two-point increase from last year and is the university’s best score in the history of the rankings.
“I am proud to see that U.S. News & World Report has ranked the University of Arizona as one of the nation’s strongest public universities,” said University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins. “Our institution serves a growing and diverse student population that has the opportunity to learn from many of the world’s top research scholars across a wide spectrum of subjects.”
U.S. News & World Report’s methodology added new categories and statistics to rank universities based on research impact and productivity: citations per publication, field-weighted citation impact, publications cited in the top 25% of journals, and publications cited in the top 5% of journals. UArizona ranked in the top 100 overall in each of the four categories and ranked in the top 40 among all public universities in three of the categories.
Citations per publication: 72 overall, 40 public
Field-weighted citation impact: 74 overall, 39 public
Publications cited in top 25% of journals: 60 overall, 37 public
Publications cited in top 5% of journals: 84 overall, 53 public
Each year, U.S. News also releases a Best Value ranking, which considers a school’s academic quality, as indicated by its 2024 ranking, and the 2022-23 net cost of attendance for a student who received the average level of need-based financial aid. The university placed No. 119 on this list – up 24 spots from the previous year.
In The New York Times’ most recent edition of the College-Access Index, which measures economic diversity by analyzing the share of students receiving Pell Grants, UArizona tied for No. 30 among public universities and tied for No. 13 among state flagship institutions.
Other U.S. News & World Report undergraduate rankings include:
Entrepreneurship: No. 17
Business: No. 29
Marketing: No. 40
Accounting: No. 46
Computer science: No. 50
Engineering: No. 50
Psychology: No. 51
Economics: No. 58
Nursing: No. 67
Best Colleges for Veterans: No. 76
Other recent rankings include:
UArizona was ranked No. 96 overall and No. 64 among public universities in the Washington Monthly’s 2023 National University Rankings, released Aug. 27. This ranking analyzes colleges and universities based on their contribution to the public good in three categories: social mobility, research and promoting public service.
UArizona ranked No. 114 overall (up 17 spots from last year) and No. 52 among public universities in Forbes’ annual list of America’s Top Colleges, released Aug. 29.
U.S. News & World Report ranks colleges and universities based on several measures of academic quality. The measures considered for national universities include graduation and retention rates, assessment by peers and counselors, faculty resources (such as class size, benefits and salaries), student selectivity, financial resources for students, alumni giving, and graduation rate performance, which is the difference between actual and predicted graduation rates.
Note: Not all academic programs are ranked annually by U.S. News & World Report. The above rankings are newly released. U.S. News & World Report also releases rankings of the best online programs, best global universities and top graduate programs. For questions regarding the rankings of specific programs and departments, email official@usnews.com.
The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season is here. Are you ready?
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting an “above normal” Atlantic Hurricane Season this year. That means we can expect 17-25 named storms between June 1 and November 30, with 4-7 likely to be major hurricanes. Forecasters have 70% confidence in these ranges.
You may think you’re ready—you’ve got some bottled water and canned goods to last a few days. Maybe you plan to get those things, just as soon as you hear the next hurricane will make landfall near you. But as we’ve learned in the past, tropical storms can quickly strengthen and change their paths. Disaster preparedness is a mind-set it’s best to be in all year, no matter where you live in Florida.
The immediate safety of yourself and your family is the most important thing to take care of. But beyond that, what about the trees around your house—can they withstand high winds and heavy rainfall? Or your pets or livestock—do you know where they can shelter if you had to leave your home? Do you have important documents in a safe place—insurance, titles, birth certificates? Do you have photos of your pre-storm property you can show to
claims adjusters? Do you know what to do and who to call after the storm?
It’s a lot to think about, especially with a hurricane bearing down on you. To avoid stress and act effectively, it’s good to have all your questions answered well before the “cone of uncertainty” is aimed at you.
Fortunately, UF/IFAS Extension has compiled an up-to-date collection of resources covering virtually every aspect of disaster preparation and recovery. It’s a good idea to review these early and often during the next six months.
UF/IFAS Disaster Preparation and Recovery
The UF/IFAS Disaster Preparation and Recovery website (https://disaster.ifas.ufl.edu) has useful information for homeowners, businesses, nurseries, marinas, ranches, farms, and communities. The website is updated frequently, and new hurricane-related blogs are posted almost daily. It’s a good place to stay up on the latest hurricane information.
he University of Florida will collaborate with nine other universities on a groundbreaking $19.5 million Landolt NASA Space Mission(opens in new tab). Recently approved for deployment, the mission seeks to place an artificial “star” into Earth’s orbit. By doing so, it aims to tackle several open challenges in astrophysics, including understanding the speed and acceleration of the universe’s expansion.
Named in honor of the late astronomer Arlo Landolt, the Landolt Mission will deploy a calibrated light source into orbit in 2029. The artificial star will orbit Earth at a distance of 22,236 miles, providing a reference point alongside real stars to create new stellar brightness catalogs. Its synchronized orbit with Earth’s rotation speed will ensure it remains stationary over the United States during its inaugural year in space.
Central to the mission is the refinement of telescope calibration, which will boost the accuracy of measuring stellar brightness across various celestial phenomena, from nearby stars to distant supernovae in far-off galaxies.
UF’s JAMIE TAYAR, an assistant professor of astronomy, will serve on the mission team. She believes the mission will set a new standard for understanding star brightness, leading to more precise estimates of their size, scale, and age.
“Lots of our understanding of the universe relies on understanding how bright things are,” Tayar said.
In pursuit of such precision, the team will deploy a small satellite equipped with multiple lasers into space. These lasers will provide consistent and known brightness levels, overcoming limitations in ground-based telescopes. Positioned near a star, the satellite will precisely determine its absolute brightness, enabling advancements in various scientific fields.
“Lasers in space is a pretty cool selling point, as is getting to work on a mission,” Tayar said. “But scientifically, what we’re trying to do here is really fundamental.”
Experts will use the enhanced data from this project to deepen their understanding of stellar evolution and exoplanets, as well as to fine-tune parameters related to dark energy. Tayar is optimistic the mission will also help identify habitable zones, referred to as ‘Goldilocks’ regions, where conditions are just right for the existence of water and potentially life.
“The goal is to be able to figure out, for other planets orbiting other stars, whether they too could have oceans where life could presumably arise and live,” she said. “For each star, you need to know exactly how much energy is coming from the star, and exactly how far away the planet is, and so on.”
Comprised mostly of early-career researchers, the mission team aims to advance our understanding of fundamental properties used in daily astronomical observations. The UF team will focus on analyzing data and refining current models of stars, translating insights gained from the Landolt mission into broader scientific understanding.
As the mission launch date approaches, Tayar anticipates training the next generation of mission leadership, recruiting at least one graduate student and one undergraduate student to assist with data analysis and model development.
“There are so many big questions in astronomy: How did we get here? Are there other planets like ours? Do aliens exist?” Tayar said. “But those are really hard questions, and so to answer them the measurements have to be really good, and they have to be right.”
With mission control based at George Mason University on its Fairfax Campus, the team also includes Blue Canyon Technologies; California Institute of Technology; Lawrence Berkley National Lab; Mississippi State University; Montreal Planetarium and iREx/University of Montreal; the University of Hawaii; the University of Minnesota, Duluth; and the University of Victoria. The mission’s payload with be developed in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a leading authority in measuring photon emissions.
In May, 11 U.S. veterans gathered at the University of Florida to learn how to hack into computer systems.
With the intensity and persistence of a shady cyber-criminal, the Florida veterans learned – through trial and much error – how to invade protected computer networks and become serious cybersecurity threats.
“You cannot learn how to hack without actually hacking. They learned how to hack in way that is safe for them and safe for society,” said Sandip Ray, Ph.D., a professor in UF’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering who led the group of carefully selected military veterans to study hardware security.
Led by UF’s Warren B. Nelms Institute, the three-year project is called Pivots: VETS-HASTE: Veterans SkillBridge through Industry-Based Hardware Security Training and Education; it is funded by $1 million from the National Science Foundation and is led by Ray of UF’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Wanli Xing, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the College of Education.
The study teaches veterans in-demand skills in a chaotic cyber-world that is constantly under attack from crafty hackers. This is an intense program that hosted the veterans on campus for a week and then has them working on home studies through the fall with access to UF resources, including Ray.
The University of Florida has once again earned a 5-star ranking on Money magazine’s “Best Colleges in America” list. This marks the second consecutive year that UF has been recognized for its exceptional value, combining high-quality education with affordability. UF is the only university in Florida and the Southeastern Conference to receive this distinction from Money for 2024.
The magazine’s annual “Best Colleges in America” ranking evaluates institutions based on 25 factors, including quality of education, affordability, and student outcomes such as graduation rates and employment success. The magazine identified UF as one of the best bargains in higher education and named it a top-10 most affordable school.
“The University of Florida accomplishes great things,” said UF Board of Trustees Chairman Mori Hosseini. “For the second year in a row we’ve earned 5 stars on Money’s list of Best Colleges. We’re grateful for this honor, and we are committed to being both an elite and practical university that equips our students and moves our state forward.”
This year, Money magazine reviewed more than 700 public and private colleges across the U.S., and only 54 institutions earned 5-star rankings.
“This honor reflects UF’s dedication to delivering top-notch, affordable education,” UF President Ben Sasse said. “Our faculty, staff, and students continue to strive for excellence, ensuring that the University of Florida remains a leader in higher education. We will continue to build on this success, making UF a place where academic achievement and accessibility go hand in hand.”
The financial bargain students receive at UF is just one of the elements that Money considered for the ranking. To be included in the list, universities and colleges had to reach the median graduation rate for their category, which included public, private, or historically black colleges and universities. The ranking also required the university or college to have a higher graduation rate than other institutions of similar size.
The magazine estimated that the net price of a UF degree is roughly $88,000, not factoring in federal or state aid. The figure is significantly less than the median price among the colleges in the 2024-2025 rankings, according to Money.
UF also appeared on Money’s “Best Public Colleges in the U.S.” and “Best Colleges in the South” sublists. Money’s 2024 “Best Colleges in America” full list is available here.
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