The Global Language Monitor has ranked colleges and universities based on their appearance on the internet, the blogosphere, global print and electronic media. I read about it for the first time in a recent broadcast email from my alma mater’s Alumni Affairs office. They mentioned it because Vanderbilt topped the list in ‘media momentum’, meaning they demonstrated the largest positive change in number of citations across all media studied.

In the general university rankings, Harvard, not surprisingly, ranked the highest in the overall number of citations, rounding out the top five with Columbia, University of Michigan, University of California – Berkley, and Stanford. As for the college rankings, Colorado College scored the highest, with Williams, University of Richmond, Middlebury and Wellesley making the top five list.

As for universities with ‘media momentum’, after Vanderbilt, the top five included University of Virginia, Emory, Rice and University of Texas – Austin. The college top five included Hamilton, Pomona, Skidmore, Bard and Gettysburg. Our neighbors, University of the South – Sewanee and Furman, followed closely at #6 and #7. Interesting stuff.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Public Relations, Trends, Web.