Towson scores high among collegiate peers

As Towson's student population has grown, the University has successfully upheld high academic standards in comparison to its peer performance group, ranking near the top in the majority of categories in this year's assessment.

The peer performance group is made up of 11 universities including Towson.

Five are doctoral research institutions and five are masters large institutions. According to provost James Clements, Towson "falls somewhere in the middle," of this classification.

"There are some great schools in this group and we match up great," Clements said. "These are standard measures that every school in the University System of Maryland has to submit, and we come out looking great."

The universities' report measures in 11 categories ranging from entrance exam scores to graduation rates to fund-raising figures.

Towson ranked above the group average in six of the 11 categories and near the average in cases where it fell short.

Clements highlighted the University's strong 83 percent second-year retention rate, six percent above the average, it's 63.6 percent six-year graduation rated were key indicators of the University's success are its 83 percent second-year retention rate, six percent above the group average.

The only institution in the group that finished with a better rate was James Madison with 92 percent. He also pointed out Towson's six-year graduation rates for minorities and African Americans. In both cases, Towson showed about 20 percent better than the average.

"We are starting to get some national recognition for our success in these spots," Clements said. "We have worked hard to improve these numbers. We also had 5,000 minority students apply to the campus. That's a big number and shows we are having success."

Towson's SAT scores rank at the top of the group. Only James Madison has higher 25th and 75th percentile scores than Towson. The University has continued to receive greater numbers of applications during the last few years, causing the SAT scores to improve. Towson received more than 20,000 applications last year.

They accepted 69 percent of the applicants, showing Towson as a more selective institution than others in the group that accepts 76 percent of applicants.

Comments

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out