Brandeis is ranked 31st in U.S. News & World Report's 2012 national university rankings, up three spots from last year's ranking, faring best in the categories of SAT scores and classes with under 20 students.

Brandeis was tied with Boston College and was a single spot ahead of New York University while trailing Tufts University by one space in the rankings.

64.2 percent of Brandeis' classes have fewer than 20 students, the 18th-highest proportion among schools in the top 40 national universities, ahead of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Georgetown University and Vanderbilt University.

The 25th to 75th percentile of Brandeis students scored between 1270 and 1460 on the 1600-point SAT scale, giving Brandeis the 22nd-highest SAT scores among national universities, stronger than those of the University of California, Berkeley and BC.

Brandeis was also ranked 34th on the list of best-value schools, defined by U.S. News as a combination of academic quality and "the 2010-2011 net cost of attendance for a student who receives the average level of need-based financial aid." 44.6 percent of Brandeis students receive need-based grants, and among those students, the average discount on the net cost of attendance is 51 percent.

Senior Vice President for Communications and External Affairs Andrew Gully said that rankings are not a primary concern of the administration.

"The U.S. News reports are a snapshot. ... They are one barometer of how this University is doing," he said in an interview with the Justice.

"What we want to do is focus on the things that are important to Brandeis, for our students and for our alums," he said. "The ratings will take care of themselves."

U.S. News defines national universities as those that "offer a full range of undergraduate majors, master's, and doctoral degrees" and "are committed to producing ground-breaking research."

Brandeis has the second-lowest enrollment, at 5,642 undergraduate and graduate students, among the top 40 national universities, trailing only the California Institute of Technology.