Recent rankings by the Wall Street Journal evaluated and ranked colleges in the Midwestern U.S., and several Illinois schools made the cut on the publication's lists.
The rankings list the top 10 small, mid-size and large colleges in the Midwest, evaluating the schools on student outcomes, learning environments and diversity.
Small schools were defined by WSJ as institutions with fewer than 3,000 undergraduate students, while schools were considered to be mid-size if they had between 3,000 and 9,999 undergraduate students.
Large schools were those with undergraduate enrollment at 10,000 students or greater.
Illinois was well represented on all three lists, with nine colleges within the state landing on one of the rankings.
Lake Forest College was named as the second-best small Midwestern college, while ranking 27th overall nationally.
The University of St. Francis in Joliet was ranked as the ninth-best small Midwestern college.
Four Illinois schools made up the top 10 mid-size colleges, with Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology topping the list.
The Chicago area made up three of the list's top five schools, with Northwestern University ranking second and the University of Chicago ranking fifth. Bradley University in Peoria ranked tenth for mid-size schools.
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As for large schools, Illinois was home to two of the top three, with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Illinois Chicago were ranked second and third, respectively.
Closing out Illinois' representation on the rankings was DePaul University, which ranked sixth for large colleges.
The Wall Street Journal's top five schools in each ranking are listed below:
Small colleges
- Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Ind.
- Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Ill.
- University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, Mich.
- Albion College, Albion, Mich.
- DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind.
Mid-size colleges
- Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Ill.
- Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
- Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Mo.
- University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Ind.
- University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
Large colleges
- University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, Mich.
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana and Champaign, Ill.
- University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
- Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.
- University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, Wis.
