Both Hampden-Sydney College (H-SC) and Longwood University (LU) have recently drawn praise in the form of a rise in national rankings released by U.S. News & World Report.

Longwood has also climbed the annual “Best Bang for the Buck” rankings released by Washington Monthly.

An H-SC press release noted that among liberal arts colleges nationally, the school has risen from being ranked 105th in 2017 to 96th in 2018 according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2018 edition of its annual Best College rankings.

“Only once in the last 15 years has the college been ranked higher, and few schools in the top 100 saw as significant of an improvement as Hampden-Sydney,” school officials said in the release. “This year’s placement puts the college among the top-four liberal arts colleges in Virginia.”

The release indicated that the 2018 rankings include “data from more than 1,100 accredited four-year schools, comparing high school counselor assessments, graduation and retention rates, student selectivity, alumni giving percentage and faculty resources.”

Hampden-Sydney also ranked 93rd on the U.S. News Best Value Schools list, a list which school officials said considers both academic quality and cost.

In a message sent to the H-SC community after the new rankings were released, President Dr. Larry Stimpert said, “While our rise in the U.S. News rankings is very gratifying, what ultimately matters is the quality of the educational experience we offer young men here. Much gratitude is due to the faculty, staff and students who foster this college’s distinctive combination of rigorous academics and character development in a community of brothers.”

Longwood noted in a press release that it improved to the ninth-best public university in the U.S. News & World Report’s Southern regional university category

and, for the first time, placed in the top 30 of that overall category, tying for 27th.

School officials said, “In just three years, Longwood has climbed six spots in those overall rankings — an unusual feat considering institutions typically move no more than one spot in either direction in a given year.”

“It’s hard to make big leaps in these rankings because of the methodology used by U.S. News & World Report,” Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Dr. Jennifer Green said in the release. “An uptick in one category of data or another doesn’t usually have a noticeable overall effect. What that means is Longwood’s climb has been fueled by a campuswide effort to make positive strides. We’ve seen that in our increased graduation and retention rates and in the record number of applications we received for the class entering this fall.”

Compared to last year, Longwood climbed 18 places in the Washington Monthly’s annual “Best Bang for the Buck” rankings.

The release noted that “Longwood’s tuition increases over the last four years have been by a wide margin the lowest of any four-year public university in Virginia.”

“More and more people are taking note of the great strides Longwood is making, and also of the rich campus culture, unique mission and the special camaraderie that exist here,” President W. Taylor Reveley IV said in the release.