ST. AUGUSTINE, FL (09/09/2014)(readMedia)-- Flagler College ranked 8th on the U.S. News & World Report's 2015 edition of Best Colleges for Best Regional Colleges in the South. This is the second year Flagler has ranked in the top 10 in the college guide.
Other schools in the top 10 included High Point University in North Carolina, Florida Southern College and the University of the Ozarks in Arizona. There were more than 70 colleges and universities included in the first tier of the South rankings.
"It is a significant achievement for Flagler to be ranked among the top regional colleges in the South," said Flagler President William T. Abare Jr. "This is a tribute to the strength of our students, our faculty and staff, and our academic programs."
U.S. News defines regional colleges as focusing on the undergraduate experience and offering a broad range of programs in the liberal arts in fields such as business, nursing and education. U.S. News measures academic quality by gathering data in a number of categories: assessment by administrators at peer institutions and high school guidance counselors, how well schools perform at retaining and graduating students, the quality of and investment in the faculty, student selectivity, financial resources and the state of alumni giving. A rank is arrived at after calculating weighted scores for each school.
In August, Flagler was also included in The Princeton Review's 2015 edition of its annual college guide, "The Best 379 Colleges."
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Flagler College is a private, four-year comprehensive college located in St. Augustine, Fla. The college offers 29 majors, 34 minors and two pre-professional programs - the largest being business administration, communication, psychology and education. Small by intent, Flagler College has an enrollment of about 2,500 students, as well as a satellite campus at Tallahassee Community College in Tallahassee, Fla. U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review regularly feature Flagler as a college that offers quality education at a relatively low cost. A Flagler education is less than half the cost of similar private colleges, and competitive with many state universities. A relatively young institution (founded in 1968), Flagler College is also noted for its historic beauty. The centerpiece of the campus is the former Hotel Ponce de Leon, a grand resort built in 1888 by Henry M. Flagler, an industrialist, railroad pioneer and co-founder of Standard Oil. The Ponce has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. For more on Flagler College, visit www.flagler.edu.