A Welcoming Community of Learners
University of St. Francis (stfrancis.edu) scores 81 out of 100 on Brand Analyzer, placing it in the Strong Brand tier among Education brands, in the 84th percentile of 30021 Education brands.
The University of St. Francis (USF) is a Catholic university located in Joliet, Illinois, founded in 1920. It offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degree programs both on campus and online. USF emphasizes a welcoming, values-based learning environment for students of all ages, including traditional and adult learners. The university is noted for strong academic outcomes, such as a 100% first-time NCLEX pass rate for nursing graduates, and positions itself as an accessible, mission-driven institution for higher education.
| Brand Name | University of St. Francis |
|---|---|
| Domain | stfrancis.edu |
| Industry | Education |
| Founded | 1920 |
| Headquarters | Joliet |
| Main Competitors | Lewis University (74/100), Benedictine University (83/100), Aurora University (83/100), North Central College (73/100), Dominican University (82/100), Loyola University Chicago (90/100), DePaul University (79/100) |
Moz Domain Authority 54/100 vs category average 46 / leader 98 - a strong backlink profile, so AI systems frequently encounter mentions of the brand.
Ranked #189,915 on the Tranco list of most-visited sites - modest traffic makes the brand easy for AI models to overlook.
University of St. Francis appears on Wikipedia but without a dedicated company entity, so AI models can confuse it with similarly named subjects.
The homepage meta description reads "USF in Joliet, IL, offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs on campus and online. Call 800-735-7500 to learn more." (Meta description: 20 words (ideal length). OG description present and descriptive) - this is the summary AI engines are most likely to quote.
Structured data on the homepage: 1 JSON-LD block(s), Organization schema, Breadcrumb/Website schema, og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type, Twitter cards, canonical. Adding FAQ schema would further help AI crawlers parse the brand's identity.
AI-crawler access: robots.txt present, no AI bot restrictions - robots.txt controls whether engines like GPTBot and ClaudeBot can read the site at all.
Detected tech stack: Apache, WordPress, Ghost.
Social footprint: verified profiles on Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube, GitHub; no detected presence on Facebook, LinkedIn - consistent profiles reinforce the brand's identity across the web.
0 Reddit mentions - community discussion signals real-world reputation to AI models.
Live results from asking a general-purpose AI assistant about the brand, checked October 2026.
When asked "What is University of St. Francis?", Claude could identify the brand as of October 2026. The University of St. Francis is a private Catholic university in Joliet, Illinois, founded by the Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate, offering undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs with particular strength in nursing, health sciences, and education. Best known for its nursing and health sciences programs.
When asked "Best brands similar to University of St. Francis?", Claude would not surface University of St. Francis as of October 2026. It's a solid regional Catholic university but not typically a top-of-mind pick compared to larger or more nationally prominent institutions when recommending best-in-class options.
Common questions people ask in Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI search engines.
University of St. Francis's main competitors in Education: Lewis University (74/100), Benedictine University (83/100), Aurora University (83/100), North Central College (73/100), Dominican University (82/100).
Sources: Brand Analyzer scan
USF offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degree programs across various fields, available through on-campus study in Joliet, Illinois, or online learning formats.
The University of St. Francis (USF) is a private Catholic university located in Joliet, Illinois, founded in 1920. It offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degree programs delivered both on campus and online.
University of St. Francis has moderate AI-search visibility, scoring 54/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI visibility composite (visibility 46, trust 61, recommendation 61). This estimates how likely AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity are to know, trust, and recommend the brand.
University of St. Francis was founded in 1920. University of St. Francis operates in the Education category. It is analyzed by Brand Analyzer across seven brand dimensions and AI-search visibility.
Sources: Wikidata
University of St. Francis is headquartered in Joliet. University of St. Francis operates in the Education category.
Sources: Wikidata
USF provides higher education degree programs at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels, available both on campus in Joliet, Illinois, and online, serving traditional-age and adult learners.
University of St. Francis scores 61/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI recommendation signal, indicating it is reasonably likely to be surfaced when AI assistants like ChatGPT suggest Education options. Recommendation depends on crawlability, structured data, and category authority; a Wikipedia presence helps.
USF is known for being a Catholic, mission-driven university offering a welcoming, close-knit campus community, flexible on-campus and online programs, and strong academic outcomes, including a 100% first-time NCLEX pass rate for its nursing graduates.
University of St. Francis can improve AI discoverability by strengthening structured data (Organization and FAQ schema), maintaining an accurate Wikipedia/Wikidata entity, earning authoritative citations, and keeping content crawlable for AI bots. Brand Analyzer measures these as visibility, trust, and recommendation signals.
USF serves prospective undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students, including both traditional-age students and adult learners, who are seeking on-campus or online education in a supportive, values-based community.
USF is noted for its welcoming, values-based campus environment and flexibility in offering both on-campus and online degree programs for students of varying ages and backgrounds, along with strong academic outcomes such as a 100% first-time NCLEX pass rate for nursing graduates.
University of St. Francis scores 54/100 for AI visibility - how well ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can discover, identify and cite the brand.
University of St. Francis has a limited AI-visibility profile at 54/100 - a proxy for how readily ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews can recognise and cite it. Its strongest area is trust (61/100) and its weakest is visibility (46/100). It benefits from a Wikidata knowledge-graph entry, a global traffic rank of #189,915 (Tranco) and a Moz Domain Authority of 54/100. The main gaps holding it back: no clear Wikipedia entity to anchor it in LLM training data and no llms.txt to steer AI to its best pages. In a live check, Claude could already identify University of St. Francis from memory (October 2026) - a sign these signals are paying off.
The score combines seven dimensions - name quality, digital presence, visual identity, messaging clarity, trust foundation, AI discoverability, and brand authority - into a single objective benchmark.
Ranked closest to University of St. Francis: Startups.com (81/100), Startit (81/100), St. Francis Xavier University (81/100), St Giles International (81/100).
A step up - brands to learn from: Washington State University (91/100), Workaway (91/100).
Category leader: Canva (97/100).
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