Recently, University of Puget Sound tied with Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky. for the rank of 76 in US News’s Best Colleges.
As well as having beautiful campuses both are recognized as prestigious liberal arts universities. However, despite receiving the same ratings there are notable differences between Transylvania University and University of Puget Sound.
While University of Puget Sound does not have a religious affiliation, Transylvania is affiliated with the Disciples of Christ.
“[The University of Puget Sound] used to be fairly closely affiliated with the Methodist Church or Methodist Episcopal Church until 1980, when we divested from them, at least in part in order to make our students eligible for federal financial aid—lack of separation of church and state having been a roadblock to that,” professor Steve Rodgers of the Foreign Language and Literature Department said.
Remnants of the University’s prior affiliation are still visible today.
“If you want to see an old vestige of Puget Sound in the early 20th century, look to the right of the main entrance to Jones at the top of the stairs on the east side to see the plaque listing the priorities of the institution at that time,” Rodgers said.
When it comes to academics, both universities provide a wide range of classes and similar settings in terms of small class sizes; according to US News a majority of the classes have fewer than 20 students.
Majors are similar as well. Two of the most popular majors for both universities are psychology and business.
There is a similar distribution of male and female students as well as similar student to faculty ratios and acceptance percentages ranging around 82-84 percent.
Despite these similarities, the differences between Transylvania University and University of Puget Sound continue to make themselves apparent when compared.
According to US News there is a difference in the number of students in sororities and fraternities. University of Puget Sound has more students who do not participate in Greek Life whereas a majority of Transylvania University students are involved in Greek Life.
The universities also received different endowments for 2012. According to the report Transylvania University received over $127 million and University of Puget Sound received over $250 million.
“I’ve been at this university since 1987, and there have been a lot of ups and downs throughout those 26 years. I’ve seen three different presidents—Phibbs, Pierce and Thomas—and several different deans of the faculty and of students,” Rodgers said. “The one thing that has seemed to stay constant is the high quality of the students and the high quality of the faculty. I can’t say I’d want to trade either one of them, overall, for any other university of our size and stature.”
While almost 100 years younger than Transylvania University, University of Puget Sound has received its share of distinctions.
University of Puget Sound has been recognized multiple times by organizations and magazines such as Colleges That Change Lives (CTCL), Colleges of Distinction and the Princeton Review. Faculty members have been honored with several awards from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
“I’ll rank our faculty at least equal to, and—more often than not—higher than that of any other liberal arts institution in the country,” Rodgers said.
