What is Green River College's Ranking?

By Ross Jennings, April 17, 2023

Out of the more than 1,100 two-year colleges in the US, Green River is currently ranked #11 in the Open Doors table. Moreover, Green River has sent international students to 76 of the top 100 US News-ranked national universities.

In 1983, US News magazine asked over 1,300 college presidents to rank their peer institutions and used that data to create a ranking of US colleges and universities. It wasn’t the first to do so – Time and Newsweek magazines had published rankings before – but US News was the first to use a recognizable methodology (since improved and tweaked considerably). US News and three other major ranking services also rank global universities, but for US schools, US News national rankings are the gold standard. Universities have a love-hate relationship with the rankings but are very quick to publish their rankings if they move up in any category. Students, parents, and educational advisors also heavily use rankings to shape their application strategies. Many think rankings are overused, but almost no one ignores them.

US News does not rank two-year (community) colleges. There is a fairly large number of for-profit student advisory services that publish their own “rankings” of community colleges, but their rankings are wildly different from each other and none of them have any credibility. The ranking most relevant to international students is published by IIE’s Open Doors and ranks two-year colleges by the number of international students they host. Of the more than 1,100 two-year colleges in the US, Green River is currently ranked #11 in the Open Doors table. Moreover, Green River has sent international students to 76 of the top 100 US News-ranked national universities. About a dozen of the top universities, such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, accept virtually no transfer students or accept them only as freshmen.

Here is a list of the top 100 universities where Green River College international students have transferred to since 2007. 

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