Knox College earns recognition for its academic strength, affordability, and campus diversity in the newly released 2021 Best Colleges rankings from U.S. News & World Report.

Knox ranks No. 72 overall among Best National Liberal Arts Colleges, a category that takes into account various factors, including an institution’s academic reputation among experts, class size, graduation rates, and alumni giving.

The Best Colleges rankings, which were published on September 14, note Knox’s excellence in several other categories.

U.S. News included Knox as one of its “Best Value” schools, listing it as No. 20 among national liberal arts colleges. The “Best Value” rankings consider academic quality and the price that students pay after receiving need-based scholarships or grants.

In addition, Knox ranks No. 34 among national liberal arts colleges in the “Top Performers on Social Mobility” category, which considers how successful colleges are in terms of graduating students who receive federal Pell Grants. Pell Grants typically are awarded to students from households earning less than $50,000 a year, with most of the funds going to students from households earning less than $20,000 a year. 

The publication also names Knox as one of the “A-plus Schools for B Students.” Knox is among 59 national liberal arts colleges—all grouped together—in this category, which examines the first- to second-year student retention rates at schools that admit a meaningful proportion of students who didn’t earn straight A’s in high school.

Knox received recognition for the international diversity of its student body, ranking No. 10 among national liberal arts colleges.

The Best Colleges rankings come on the heels of other recent rankings that highlight the value of a Knox education.

• Washington Monthly magazine ranked Knox as No. 40 overall among 218 U.S. liberal arts colleges, and No. 2 among liberal arts colleges in Illinois for the College’s “contribution to the public good” in terms of supporting and promoting social mobility, student research, and public service. Knox has placed in the magazine’s top 50 for nine years in a row.
• Washington Monthly also picked Knox as one of its “Best Bang for the Buck” colleges, a designation recognizing schools that “help non-wealthy students obtain marketable degrees at affordable prices.”
• The Princeton Review named Knox as one of the nation’s top colleges in the 2021 edition of its guidebook, The Best 386 Colleges. While schools featured in the guidebook are listed in alphabetical order and are not individually ranked, inclusion in The Best 386 Colleges puts Knox among the top 14 percent of U.S. four-year colleges, which were selected mainly for academic quality.