The University tied for 129th in the top tier in the U.S. News & World Report’s annual best colleges list, matching places with Arizona State University, Ohio University, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Kentucky and the University of Utah. 
Last year’s ranking put the University at 135th.    
The flagship campus of the LSU System came in behind nine of the 13 other Southeastern Conference universities. It beat out Mississippi State University, the University of Mississippi and the University of Arkansas. 
U.S. News & World Report, a publisher of news and rankings,  completes its annual college ranking by comparing the freshman retention rates, six-year graduation rates, number of classes with fewer than 20 students and students’ SAT/ACT scores. It groups schools into categories: National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges and Regional Universities and Regional Colleges. 
The U.S. News & World Report placed the University in the National Universities category. According to their website, the University’s categorization is a result of its full range degrees and research opportunities  because it grants a majority of its degrees in the arts and sciences. 
LSU President F. King Alexander said Friday that while the University’s ranking pleased him, the measures that indicate real value in a university are absent from the U.S. News & World Report’s methodology. He is an advocate for college affordability and availability. 
Alexander is a supporter of a different kind of rating system, and worked on the development of the White House College Scorecard released in 2013. 
The White House College Scorecard was launched in February 2013, but some of the data it uses dates back as far as the 2010-2011 school year.
According to its website, the White House College Scorecard takes into account graduates’
career earnings, loan defaults and indebtedness — a college’s affordability. However, U.S. News & World Report measures an institution’s overall quality as a measure in its
rankings of universities, according to its website.  
The White House College Scorecard rates schools merits instead of ranking them. The Daily Reveille compiled the Scorecard’s data of all the colleges and schools in Louisiana and ranked them in February after the Scorecard’s release. 
In The Daily Reveille’s findings, the University is the top in the state based on graduation rate, student loan default rates and overall cost per student to attend. 
On the U.S. News & World Report rankings, Tulane University came in at 54 — higher than every SEC school except Vanderbilt University and the University of Florida. Princeton University, another private institution, weighed in at number one. 
Earlier this year, Alexander said these high rank of private institutions are a part of the “Northeastern Mentality,” a thought pattern where people
believe higher cost, exclusivity and higher average SAT/ACT scores are synonymous with higher quality.