They're all talking (and talking) about RIT

The annual batch of college guides showed up on magazine racks last fall and, once again, RIT's polished reputation gleams. U.S. News & World Report: America's Best Colleges, one of the leading guide books for prospective college students, ranked RIT as one of the nation's leading universities -- second for academic reputation and ninth among northern regional schools for best value.

RIT also achieved high marks for student/faculty ratio, selectivity, SAT scores and financial resources. (Last spring U.S. News & World Report rated RIT's graduate programs among the nation's best: The School of Photographic Arts and Sciences ranked number one in its field; in the overall Master of Fine Arts category, the guide book placed RIT at 19; and the master's degree program in film was recognized among the top 14 in the nation.

The national back patting didn't stop with U.S. News. According to Princeton Review's The Best 311 Colleges, "The very prestigious Rochester Institute of Technology is a demanding arts and technology school . . . [with] modern classrooms, exceptional laboratories, and state-of-the-art equipment . . . facilities for the hearing impaired are arguably the best in the country."

RIT programs and facilities received kudos in the 1999 edition of The Fiske Guide to Colleges, a selective review of 300 four-year colleges and universities: "The institute specializes in carving out niches for itself with unusual programs." The Insider's Guide to the Colleges 1999, compiled by the staff of the Yale Daily News, said, "RIT students tend to be a pretty secure bunch of people, confident about the jobs they will find after college."