MEDIA COVERAGE SURVEY RANKS PRATT TOP ART AND DESIGN COLLEGE

Pratt Ranks 14th Overall in U.S. and 5th in New York State

For the second consecutive time, Pratt Institute has been ranked number one among the country’s colleges of art and design for the quantity and quality of its coverage in global print and electronic media, on the Internet, throughout the blogosphere, and in social media outlets, according to the Global Language Monitor’s (GLM) TrendTopper MediaBuzz^TM Winter/Spring 2011 Rankings, which also lists Pratt as 14th among all colleges in the entire U.S. and fifth among all colleges and universities in New York State for its overall media presence. Pratt was the only college of art and design in the country out of the top 20 listed in the college category.   

Pratt was awarded the distinction of “Top Art and Design School” according to GLM's “Best of Class” rankings, which list schools that are either first in the overall rankings or first in a specific classification, an honor first bestowed on the Institute by GLM in its July 2010 rankings. 

The Institute was ranked 14th among all colleges in the U.S. for its overall media presence, up from 16th in the July 2010 rankings. Pratt was ranked higher than any other college of art and design, including Cooper Union (26), School of the Art Institute of Chicago (36), Rhode Island School of Design (43), School of Visual Arts (51), California Institute of the Arts (101), California College of Art (125), and Corcoran College of Art and Design (153). There were a total of 153 institutions of higher education included in the rankings.

Pratt was also ranked fifth among all colleges and universities in New York State for its overall media presence. Columbia University, Cornell University, Juilliard School of Music, and Vassar College were ranked first through fourth, respectively.

“In the rapidly changing communications and media environment of the early 21st century, you cannot rely on television surveys, at-home interviews, newspaper clippings, or television mentions to measure the worth of a brand,” write the editors of the report. “Today the methodology must encompass the Twitters and YouTubes of the world as well as the tens of millions of blogs, the billions of Web pages, as well as the top global print and electronic media.”

GLM began its rankings system several years ago after noticing a number of biases built into supposedly non-biased studies that resulted in college and university rankings. The organization created the TrendTopper MediaBuzz Analysis in order to measure a college’s value according to its brand equity, which it defines as the value a consumer bestows upon a product. Rankings come out twice a year.

GLM used its Predictive Quantities Indicator software that utilizes a proprietary algorithm for the TrendTopper MediaBuzz Analysis. Its mathematical model allows GLM to make statistically significant comparisons among the various measurements and allows it to gauge the relative values differing institutions are assigned by consumers as well as measures of how that value changes over time.