Kent State Slides Further in U.S. News College Rankings

Kent State University has landed a coveted spot on the U.S. News and World Report's Best Colleges list for 2014 in the Best National Universities category, university officials announced Tuesday.


The university is listed at No. 201, which is a lower ranking than its previous two positions on the list in 2012 and 2011.

In 2011, Kent State ranked 183 out of 1,400 listed colleges. And in 2012 the university earned a ranking of 194 to tie with eight other schools out of 1,600 total on the list that year.

The slide in rankings for Kent State was enough to land it in the Washington Post's list of "major decliners" for this year.

Still, university officials celebrated the ranking Tuesday—the same day Kent State announced it had set another enrollment record for the fall semester on the Kent campus.

"At our Kent campus we enrolled our largest and academically best-qualified freshman class ever, drawn from a record 21,700 applicants," Kent State Provost Todd Diacon said. "And now Kent State is in the first tier of U.S. News' list of the Best National Universities, and is the only public university in Northeast Ohio to achieve this distinction. We are truly having a great start to this fall semester."