It’s September, and you know what that means: the leaves are changing, the school year is beginning, and the U.S. News and World Report has released its annual Best College Rankings. While these rankings have frequently drawn criticism and complaint, students still turn to them for guidance and colleges are quick to trumpet top positions on the list.
This has been another wild year in college admissions. Yet even with many schools returning to required standardized testing, bans on legacy admissions, and divisive campus protests, you’ll note that the 2025 rankings have stayed relatively stable.
U.S. NEWS COLLEGE RANKINGS: 5 KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. The view from the top remained the same: The top National Universities—Princeton at #1, MIT at #2, and Harvard at #3—remained unchanged from last year, while Williams and Amherst once again ranked #1 and #2 among National Liberal Arts Colleges. The University of Pennsylvania and MIT again topped the list of undergraduate business programs, and MIT and Stanford remained the highest-ranked engineering programs.
2. But there was some movement further down the list: Stanford, which tied for third among the National Universities last year, fell to #4 this year, while Penn dropped from #6 to #10 and Brown, from #9 to #13. The University of Connecticut (formerly #58) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (#60) also fell in the rankings, tying for the 70th spot on the 2025 list. At the same time, Caltech, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Northwestern—all among the top 10 schools on last year’s list—climbed to tie for the #6 position, and Tulane, whose president was unpleasantly “shocked” to find the school ranked at #73 last year, saw its position rise to #63.
3. A win for the UCs: While the top spots among National Universities went to private schools, UCLA (tied for #15) and UC Berkeley (#17) remained the top-ranked public schools. The University of Michigan stayed at #3 on the list of public universities, while UVA rose to #4 (from #5 last year).
4. Specialized lists continue: As in previous years, U.S. News and World Report released specialized rankings of the most innovative colleges, the best colleges for veterans, and the best colleges for students’ social mobility. (This last ranking, based on Pell Grant indicators, tracks the graduation of economically disadvantaged students.) Of particular interest to cost savvy students: the Best Value Schools, a list that correlates a school’s “academic quality” (i.e., its college ranking) against the cost for “an out-of-state student who received the average level of need-based financial aid.”
5. Only minor changes in methodology: One explanation for the relative stability of this year’s list: U.S. News and World Report’s consistent ranking methodology. In contrast to last year’s methodological shake-up (which, among other changes, ended the use of metrics expected to favor wealthy colleges, such as undergraduate class size, admitted students’ high school class rank, and alumni giving rates), the company made relatively few changes to its system this year. The most notable of adjustments: giving increased weight to Pell Grant-recipient graduation rates and graduation performance, and dropping first-generation graduation rates and graduation performance from its ranking calculations.
FINAL TAKEAWAY
We’ve expressed skepticism about relying too much on rankings before, and U.S. News and World Report itself urges students to use its list as nothing more than a “starting point” for their explorations.
As the New York Times noted,
“Few franchises in American higher education are as contentious as the U.S. News rankings. Over the decades, their publisher has faced trouble with manipulated data, complaints about murky methodologies, accusations of revenge and the foundational question of whether it is appropriate to rank colleges.”
In addition to reviewing rankings, we often encourage students to look at college guides (like the ever-popular Fiske Guide to Colleges) and review sites (like niche.com) to get a general sense of schools, in addition to taking virtual and in-person tours of individual colleges. (Take a look at our recent suggestions for maximizing college tours here.) Remember, no ranking can capture how well a school will suit you—and that is the real key to college success.
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