Virginia Tech Climbing the Rankings Ladder

Virginia Tech ranks in the top 20 colleges and universities being talked about most frequently in print, broadcast, and Internet media, and in blogs and tweets, according to the latest ranking by an Austin, Texas-based company that specializes in media analytics.

Global Language Monitor said that its “brand equity measurements” of 2012 mentions ranked Virginia Tech No. 17. Last year, the Blacksburg, Va., university was rated 19th. This year’s measurement puts it higher on the list than Johns Hopkins, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Duke. The University of Virginia fell from number 25 to 32 on the Buzz list.

The company rated MIT as the number one school followed by Harvard. The University of California at Berkeley was the top public university in the 10 highest ranked schools. The University of Minnesota jumped 15 spots into the top 20 while the University of Michigan dropped 12 places from 13 to 25. Public universities held 13 of the top 25 rankings.

“Virginia Tech has long been in the forefront of new technology applications, and we suspect that this latest ranking reflects the technical expertise of many young people wanting to become Hokies,” said Larry Hincker, associate vice president of University Relations. “It also might reflect [Virginia] Tech’s highly respected reputation. Either way, it’s nice to be noticed.”

For 2012, Virginia Tech’s homepage had 16.7 million page views and 11.4 million unique views. In addition, there were 3.3 unique visitors, while the university’s Facebook page grew from 93,571 likes in January 2012 to 118,063 likes in December 2012.