How do I know if a university is accredited or not? Does a tier #3 university mean it is not accredited?
You can check whether a university is accredited on the CHEA database online. http://www.chea.org/search/ The tier ranking has nothing to do with accreditation. Rankings are done by different groups for different reasons. A tier 3 would almost certainly be accredited or USNews wouldn’t rank it. (there are some accredited schools they don’t rank as well) The USNews tiers simply tell you where a school ranks compared to similar colleges in the opinion of USNews. Tier 1 is the top 25%, tier 2 is the next 25%. That means that tiers 1 and 2 are the top half of schools. From bottom up, tier 4 is the bottom 25% and tier 3 is the next 25%. Tiers 3 and 4 are the bottom half of all schools in the category. Be careful, many people don’t agree with these ranking systems. Some people prefer the system that suggests there are the very top schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, UC-Berkeley, and the like), schools most people have heard of but aren’
