Latest southern Colorado news, weather and sports from FOX21 News

AIR FORCE ACADEMY, COLO. -- According to high school guidance counselors, the Air Force Academy is the number one liberal arts college in the U.S.

The U.S. News and World Report released its annual college rankings late Monday with a brand new category. This year, the magazine asked high school counselors what schools they thought offered the best undergraduate education to their students. They ranked each college on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the best or marked "Don't know" for schools they were unfamiliar with.

The Academy ranked second best in the nation in Aeronautical and Astronautical engineering among undergraduate programs for the 11 consecutive year.  Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s main campus in Daytona Beach, Fla., retained the top spot, while its Prescott, Ariz. campus came in third this year.

The Air Force Academy tied for the number five ranking of best undergraduate engineering programs with Cal-Poly and the U.S. Naval Academy.

One of the Air Force Academy’s other engineering programs, electrical engineering, also earned the number five slot in this year’s rankings of undergraduate electrical engineering programs. 

The Academy is tied for #33 in the national liberal arts colleges rankings, and under that category, came in at number three for Top Public Schools. It also ranked #55 among best undergraduate business programs.

“The school has 74.0 percent of its classes with fewer than 20 students, and the student-faculty ratio at United States Air Force Academy is 8:1,” according to the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

In August, the Air Force Academy earned a number 10 overall ranking by Forbes and was ranked in the top 10 in several categories in the Princeton Review.