A Head for Volunteering

With 31 undergraduate alumni serving overseas in the Peace Corps, Tufts ranks 15th in the country for number of volunteers among medium-sized colleges and universities. Last year the university had 20 alumni serving abroad.

According to the Peace Corps, Tufts alumni are serving as volunteers in countries ranging from Benin and the Dominican Republic to Jordan and Rwanda. They work in a range of areas, including education, health and business development.

Since the Peace Corps was founded in 1961, 517 Tufts University alumni have served.

The medium-sized college category in which Tufts appears—those institutions with between 5,001 and 15,000 undergraduates—meant that it was compared with mostly much larger schools, such as Cornell and George Washington University. (Tufts had around 5,150 undergraduates in the last academic year.) If it had been grouped in the small-schools category, it would have ranked first.

The rankings are calculated based on data as of September 30, 2011, as self-reported by Peace Corps volunteers.