NORMAL - Area colleges and universities included in the U.S. News & World Report rankings maintained similar positions to last year's results. | Photo gallery: 59 pictures from ISU's Quad day

Bloomington-based Illinois Wesleyan University once again is considered in the top tier of U.S. liberal arts universities, among 260 similar campuses.

This year it placed 60th, bumped down one notch from last year's placing. The top-ranked school in the liberal arts category is Amherst College in Massachusetts.

IWU is among many schools in the top tier that continued a protest of the peer assessment portion of the rankings, refusing to participate, said IWU spokesman Matt Kurz.

"We, like many of the schools in the top tier, have some issues in the methodology" used in collecting the U.S. News data, he said.

The rankings are based on public data such as graduation and retention rates, financial resources, alumni donors, and more. However, a large portion of each school's score is based on each president's personal opinions of other schools.

Among the best national universities, Harvard University topped the list. And among the nation's public universities, University of Illinois ranked 40th.

Illinois State University in Normal placed in the third tier of the national universities category, the seventh year it has appeared in the list of about 250 schools. Schools after the top tier aren't assigned numerical ratings, but listed alphabetically.

The administration was most pleased this year with the report's recognition that ISU's selectivity continues to increase, said ISU spokesman Jay Groves. The state's oldest public university also continues to make gains in subcategories of acceptance rate, six-year graduation rate, and percent of classes under 20 students.

Two private area colleges also gain mention in the U.S. News rankings.

Eureka College kept its same spots as last year: ranked fourth among Illinois and 28th in the Midwest among the best baccalaureate colleges.

And for the second year in a row, Lincoln College-Normal - which began offering bachelor degrees in 2001 - joined the fourth tier of the Midwest best baccalaureate colleges.

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U.S. News & World Report rankings

National Universities

National universities in Illinois receiving a ranking.

Tier 1

40. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

102. Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago

Tier 3

Illinois State, Normal

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

University of Illinois at Chicago

Tier 4

Northern Illinois, DeKalb

Liberal Arts Colleges

Liberal arts colleges in Illinois receiving a ranking.

Tier 1

56. Wheaton College, Wheaton

60. Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington

88. Augustana College, Rock Island

88. Knox College, Galesburg

94. Lake Forest College, Lake Forest

Tier 3

Illinois College, Jacksonville

Millikin University, Decatur

Monmouth College, Monmouth

Principia College, Elsah