Maintaining its status as one of America's top public universities, UGA is enjoying another banner year with a near-record enrollment and one of the brightest freshman classes ever.

UGA is tied for 20th among public universities and 59th out of 124 institutions overall in this year's U.S. News and World Report "Best Colleges" guide. This is the ninth consecutive year UGA has ranked 22nd or higher among the country's leading universities.

"It is very gratifying for the hard work of the students, faculty and staff to be recognized with a top-20 ranking," said UGA President Michael F. Adams. "Such recognition is the result of consistently doing things right. As the flagship university of the state, UGA has an obligation to serve Georgia's people with the highest level of quality. This ranking is an indication that UGA is doing just that."

The university's continuing popularity is reflected in a fall semester enrollment of 33,831 students. The total is 128 fewer students (0.4 percent) than last fall's record of 33,959, but is still the third-highest enrollment in university history, just 47 below the second-highest enrollment of 33,878, recorded in 2003.

The total includes 32,757 students at UGA's main Athens campus and 883 students at the university's extended campuses in Gwinnett County, Griffin and Tifton and at the Terry College Executive Education Center in Buckhead.

Undergraduate enrollment totals 25,144 while there are 6,214 graduate students and 1,549 students in the professional schools of law, pharmacy and veterinary medicine. There are 191 students enrolled in independent study.

Of the total 33,831 enrollment, 7,773 students had never attended UGA before, including 4,302 first-time freshmen who enrolled in the fall. Combined with 302 first-time freshmen who enrolled in the summer, the total count of first-time freshmen for the summer and fall is 4,604.

The freshman class is one of the most academically talented ever to enroll at UGA. The class has a record 3.79 high school grade point average and a SAT average of 1233. Students who took the ACT had a mean score of 27.0 compared to 26.6 the previous year.

About 90 percent of the freshmen took College Board Advanced Placement classes and 252 first-time freshmen earned enough academic credit through advanced placement and joint-enrollment programs to be officially classified as sophomores. Another 18 had enough credit to be officially classified as juniors.

About 20 percent of the freshmen self-identified as being from an under-represented minority group. About seven percent of the class is African American, about eight percent is of Asian heritage and about two percent is Hispanic. The remainder are Native American or identify themselves as multiracial.

About 83 percent of freshmen are from Georgia but more than 40 percent have social security numbers initially issued in other states, reflecting the continued in-migration to Georgia from other parts of the country. The class includes 160 students representing 51 different countries and more than 230 students from homes where English is not the native language.