Last year, amid a barrage of negative headlines around Ivy League universities, Forbes introduced a list of New Ivies. These schools, the magazine claimed, reflected public and private universities that were producing smart, successful graduates with excellent employment prospects. This spring, Forbes released its second annual list, using a methodology that considers school size, selectivity, and standardized test scores, coupled with feedback from a survey of 380 employers and hiring managers, to identify schools where “graduating students that are outpacing most Ivy Leaguers in the eyes of employers.”
INTRODUCING THE NEW IVIES: 2025
The Public Ivies
1. Georgia Institute of Technology
2. Purdue University
3. The University of Texas at Austin
4. United States Military Academy
5. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
7. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
8. University of Pittsburgh
10. William & Mary
Note: UC schools were omitted from this list, as they do not report test scores, which are a key piece of Forbes’ selection criteria.
The Private Ivies
1. Carnegie Mellon University
2. Emory University
4. Johns Hopkins University
5. Northwestern University
10. Washington University in St. Louis
While this list features many of the same schools that appeared in Forbes initial ranking, there are a few new additions. Newcomers include Purdue, Pittsburgh, W&M, Tufts, WashU (a school whose absence from last year’s list was flagged by our commenters), and—perhaps most notably—the United States Military Academy at West Point, which had been excluded last year because Forbes did not include military academies in its analysis. We have often discussed the merits of service academies, which offer students an excellent education and opportunity to support their country, but Forbes also highlights the employment potential of West Point’s cadets: the school received the highest marks of all public colleges in their survey of employers.
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RANKINGS–WITH A GRAIN OF SALT
That said, it is worth approaching Forbes’ system with some skepticism. Their ranking includes only private schools with over 3,500 students and public schools with over 4,000 students, which means they ignore small liberal arts colleges like Williams and Amherst that have excellent post-graduation employment rates. Forbes’survey of 380 “C-suite inhabitants, vice presidents and other managers” may also be less helpful than it seems at first glance, as it reflects a very small fraction of the millions of employers in the U.S. In addition, the data Forbes chooses to highlight from its survey seems to reflect a disproportionately negative outlook on Ivy League schools. For example, Forbes notes that 37% of survey respondents said they were less likely to hire an Ivy League graduate than they were five years ago, and 12% said they would never hire an Ivy League graduate, but this leaves 51%—a majority of respondents—who were presumably as likely or more likely to hire an Ivy Leaguer. This framing perhaps explains the disjunction between Forbes’ list and other analyses of post-graduation employment prospects (see examples here and here), which often rate Ivy League schools highly.
We have long argued that no college ranking system is perfect and that lists of “best” schools are most helpful when they introduce students to new colleges and unexpected undergraduate opportunities. Forbes’ round-up of New Ivies is no exception to this rule. We encourage readers to explore the many wonderful schools on the magazine’s list—but not to write off those that did not make the cut.
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