Northwest Arkansas schools continue to rank among the state’s best, according to recent U.S. News & World Report rankings.
NWA was home to eight of Arkansas’ top 10 high schools in the news outlet’s latest report on the nation’s secondary education, with a clean sweep by longtime ranking leader Haas Hall Academy’s Fayetteville, Rogers and Springdale locations in the top three spots respectively. The first two did well enough to place in the top 100 nationwide, with Fayetteville at 45th and Rogers, 100th.
Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy High School, Bentonville and Bentonville West high schools, Rogers New Technology High School and Fayetteville High School also fell into the state’s top 10.
The rankings combine several measures of almost 25,000 public high schools across the country, including their students’ scores on state assessments, college readiness, graduation rate and underserved student performance.
U.S. News’ college rankings were also released last month. Factors such as graduation rate, first-generation student success and peer assessments put the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, at the top of the state and among the nation’s top 100 public universities. It was particularly strong in its supply chain management and logistics program, which placed 11th in the country and outpaced Texas A&M University and the University of California, Berkeley.
The University of Arkansas in September marked its highest enrollment ever for the third straight year, passing 32,000 undergraduates, graduate students and law students for the first time. This school year’s freshman class is the university’s second-largest and includes a record number hailing from within Arkansas. The enrollment of 32,140 students in September was up almost 4% from a year earlier and almost 16% higher than five years ago.
“This has been another great year for the University of Arkansas as a destination university,” Suzanne McCray, vice provost for enrollment and dean of admission, said in a written statement.
John Brown University wasn’t evaluated in U.S. News’ latest report but ranked first in the state in the Wall Street Journal’s 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S., which rated the top 400 universities. Its biggest strengths in the ratings came from a student survey that scored highly in reported learning opportunities, career preparedness and facilities. Those and other factors placed John Brown ahead of Texas Tech University, Oklahoma State University and most of the University of Texas’s campuses.
