Why are jesuit colleges highly regarded?

Corbett
Sat, 15 Jul 2017 05:11:30 +0000

In conventional secular rankings of colleges and universities, the highest-ranked Catholic schools do tend to be Jesuit. For example, seven of the ten top-ranked Catholic schools in the 2017 US News “national university” rankings are Jesuit (marked with * below)::

15 Notre Dame
20 Georgetown*
31 Boston College*
50 Villanova
60 Fordham*
86 Marquette*
86 U San Diego
96 St Louis U*
99 Loyola Chicago*
107 U San Francisco*

The highest-ranked Catholic school in the “national liberal arts college” category is Holy Cross, which is Jesuit.

And most (not all) of the top-ranked Catholic schools in the “regional university” categories are Jesuit. These include:

Loyola Maryland, Fairfield, and St Joseph's in the East

Creighton, Xavier, and John Carroll in the Midwest

Loyola New Orleans in the South

Santa Clara, Loyola Marymount, and Gonzaga in the West.

Not all highly-ranked Catholic schools are Jesuit, and not all Jesuit schools are highly ranked. But there are enough highly-ranked Jesuit schools to make even non-Catholics take notice.