For the second time in three years, University of the Ozarks has been ranked the No. 1 Best Value in the South Region in U.S. News & World Report’s annual college rankings.
In the 2024 edition of Best Colleges, released this week, U of O ranked first in the “Best Value Schools” category among the nearly 100 regional colleges in the 12-state South. The value rankings evaluate the cost of attending a university relative to the quality of the institution and takes into account such things as the percentage of students receiving need-based financial aid and the average institutional aid those students receive.
Ozarks was also ranked No. 1 in the Best Value category in the 2022 rankings and was ranked No. 2 in the category in last year’s 2023 rankings.
The magazine’s annual late summer publication that analyzes institutions of higher education also had Ozarks ranked seventh in overall rankings among South Regional Colleges — the 25th consecutive year Ozarks has been ranked in the “top tier” among regional colleges in the South.
Ozarks has been ranked among the top 10 in the South Region in each of the past 10 years. The overall rankings examine such criteria as academic reputation, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving.
In addition, Ozarks is ranked No. 36 in Social Mobility in the South Region. This category represents those colleges that are most successful “at advancing social mobility by enrolling and graduating large proportions of disadvantaged students awarded with Pell Grants. The vast majority of these federal grants are awarded to students whose adjusted gross family incomes are under $50,000,” according to the magazine.
The publication’s South Region consists of primarily undergraduate colleges and universities in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Virginia.
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