Gabrielle Russon
The University of Central Florida is moving up in an influential national ranking and has achieved the highest rating it’s ever received, the school announced Monday.
UCF is ranked the No. 64 best public school in the latest results from U.S. News & World Report.
The new rating — its highest ever — bumps the Orlando university up three spots from last year and puts officials closer to their goal of being recognized as a Top 50 public school by 2027.
“Our continued rise in the rankings is a direct result of the exceptional work of faculty, staff and incredible students. UCF’s ongoing focus on excellence through student success, discovery, innovation, and partnership with our community set our trajectory as we work to build the University for the Future,” UCF President Alexander Cartwright, who took over the school in April 2020, said in a statement to Florida Politics. “We will continue to invest in unleashing the potential of people and ideas to positively impact our community and the world.”
In addition, some of UCF’s college programs are also getting kudos from U.S. News & World Report.
UCF’s nursing and engineering programs were also ranked this year. Those two programs are especially important to Central Florida because of the community’s high workforce demands, according to the school.
UCF’s undergraduate nursing program was ranked No. 51 best while engineering was No. 75 among similar undergraduate programs, respectively, according to the 2023 U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Out of 440 private and public universities in the country, UCF was also ranked No. 137 nationally — the highest rating UCF has ever received in that category, according to UCF.
UCF was named the No. 20 “Most Innovative” school, a distinction that UCF has received being named in the Top 20 for five years in a row and has made UCF the highest-rated innovative school in the state of Florida.
Now published for 30 years, U.S. News & World Report’s rankings are an important tool for students and parents in picking out the right university.
To keep rising in the ratings, UCF has set up a list of goals and priorities that tackle everything from aggressively helping students, so they don’t drop out and successfully graduate, pushing faculty to do more research and obtain more patents as well as UCF growing its endowment for its strategic investment.
