
WHAT?! Boise State is NOT the Most Recognizable College in Idaho
Less than 365 days ago, Boise State won a very special honor from the USA Today. That’s why we’re a bit surprised to see where the university landed on a new set of rankings!
In case you forgot, USA Today released one of their “10 Best Readers Choice” lists for the 10 Best Attractions for Sports Fans last September. That list included some pretty famous sports landmarks like the Field of Dreams movie site and the Kentucky Derby Museum, but at the very top of the list? The Blue sits proudly! It was very, very cool so see it get some national recognition!
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Between “The Blue” and overall success of the school’s athletic program, you’d assume that Boise State is the “most recognized” college in Idaho but according to a list of the world’s most recognized colleges prepared by American Caldwell, that might not be true!
We wrongly assumed that this list would have to do with awards and honors, but it’s literally a ranking of how aware of the school people are. The list is actually titled “Global University Visibility Rankings.” In order to determine where a school ranked they looked at metrics like the number of news mentions a school produced, people using major search engines to research the school, the number of social media followers and institution has, how many people visit their website a month, how many unique links the school’s website has and a few other factors.

When we searched the list of 772 schools for the major colleges in Idaho? Boise State didn’t have enough clout to come out on top. The University of Idaho ranked #318 on the list. Boise State ranked #347.
The only category that Boise State topped the University of Idaho in was social media followers. Here’s a look at how things broke down.
Website Visitors
- University of Idaho: 1,045,019
- Boise State: 863,480
News Mentions
- University of Idaho: 6,832
- Boise State: 1,850
Public Interest (Search Engine Data)
- University of Idaho: 55,100
- Boise State: 29,00
Social Media Followers
- University of Idaho: 189,600
- Boise State: 291,200
Don’t get us wrong, the University of Idaho has great academics but we thought the national coverage Boise State gets for football and basketball would generate more interest in the school.
We also have to address the elephant in the room. Are people searching for the University of Idaho because of its top ranked academic programs? Or are they interested in the Bryan Kohberger case? American Caldwell explains that their “News Mention” metric like this:
This represents the level of visibility a university has based on the number of news mentions in the past 12 months. It consists primarily of national and international newspapers, print and online journals, television and radio broadcasts, newswires and blogs.
If that’s the case, the words “University of Idaho” appear in almost every news article we’ve seen related to the Kohberger case and that makes us real sad for The University of Idaho that it's being recognized for the wrong reasons.
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