8 area schools make top ‘Social Media Colleges’

Johns Hopkins takes second place, falling from first last year. (Courtesy facebook.com/johnshopkinsuniversity)

**#10 -- United States Military Academy at West Point** Major Olivia Nunn, the West Point public affairs executive officer and social media chief, helps keep cadets in line and ahead of bitter rivals Annapolis, the Naval Academy. (Courtesy defense.gov)

**#9 -- University of Washington** The KEXP radio station at the University of Washington-Seattle Campus has more Twitter followers than the official university account. (Courtesy facebook.com/UofWA)

**#8 -- Louisiana State University** Undergrads at Louisiana State University present their digital media intellectual and creative work at the Digital Media Festival. (Courtesy facebook.com/pages/Louisiana-State-University/220668084632250)

**#7 -- University of Kentucky** The University of Kentucky Wildcats spread their pride in the NCAA men's basketball champions through social media. (Courtesy http://www.facebook.com/universityofky)

**#6 -- The Ohio State University** This pitch from The Ohio State University went out to over 100,000 high school students: "Why not get to know the real Ohio State?" and then matched them up with current students. (Courtesy http://www.facebook.com/osu)

**#5 -- Stanford University** There are five free online classes this year, following a successful pilot last year that drew more than 350,000 participants worldwide. (Courtesy http://www.facebook.com/stanford)

**#4 -- Columbia University** Over 500 attendees from 50 cities attended Columbia University's "social media weekend." (Courtesy http://www.facebook.com/columbia)

**#3 -- University of Notre Dame** Notre Dame has an amazing new webpage and an outstanding blog network. (Courtesy http://www.facebook.com/notredame)

**#2 -- Johns Hopkins University** There are 25 student blogs at Johns Hopkins University, harnessed with Hopkins Interactive. (http://www.facebook.com/johnshopkinsuniversity)

**#1 -- Harvard University** Harvard University incorporates video, Facebook and Twitter through the Harvard Social Media Dashboard. (Courtesy http://www.facebook.com/Harvard)

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WASHINGTON – The results are in on colleges and universities that have fully transitioned into the 21st century, and eight of them are from the D.C. region.

StudentAdvisor.com has released its list of the top 100 “Social Media Colleges, outlining the schools it says “revolutionized how colleges communicate.”

Squeaking across the finish line are Virginia Tech at 86 and Washington & Lee College at 97.

Last year’s champion, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, took silver in this listing, losing out to Harvard University, which came in second last year.

The rankings compare more than 6,000 colleges and universities and studies their “mastery of public social media methods, tools and websites,” such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and iTunes podcasts. StudentAdvisor takes the schools’ population, and the effectiveness of its digital reach, and omits those with less than 1,000 enrollment.

The top tier of these schools is a fairly even mix of technical universities, such as LSU and the Berklee College of Music; Ivy League schools including Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth; and large public and private research institutions, such as the universities of Florida, Miami and Oklahoma-Norman and Carnegie Mellon University.

Check out the gallery at right for the Top Ten, and the list below of the other area schools that made the grade: