Illinois Wesleyan Ranks 10th in Washington Post Columnist Poll of Colleges

April 1, 2003

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — A new book by Jay Mathews, educational columnist for The Washington Post, ranks Illinois Wesleyan 10th on a list of the 100 "outstanding but underappreciated" colleges in the United States. The book, Harvard Schmarvard: Getting Beyond the Ivy League to the College That Is Best for You, is published by Prima Publishing. Matthews also listed the colleges in his column in the April 1 Washington Post.

In a 2002 column, Mathews had asked high school counselors and teachers to offer the names of colleges that their graduates rave about. From those responses, he devised his own list of "100 schools that deserve more attention than they are getting." Mathews acknowledges that his ranking is a "very fluid and idiosyncratic way to look at higher education." But he explains in his column that "I would not put much stock in my order of merit. I did it mostly for fun. You can't lure people into a friendly argument over which school is best unless you do some ranking. I have stacked them based on how often they were mentioned by counselors and teachers. I broke ties after assessing the fervor of the comments I received from the people I surveyed."

Of Illinois Wesleyan, Mathews wrote: "An ambitious building program has helped give this school of 2,100 undergraduates a national reputation. Mary Juraska, college consultant at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights, Ill., said it has 'strong fine arts, liberal arts and sciences' and 'an excellent success rate for students applying to medical school.'"