College and university rankings in the United States order the best U.S. colleges and universities based on factors that vary depending on the ranking. Rankings are typically conducted by magazines, newspapers, websites, governments, or academics. In addition to ranking entire institutions, specific programs, departments, and schools can be ranked. Some rankings consider measures of wealth, excellence in research, selective admissions, and alumni success. There is also much debate about rankings' interpretation, accuracy, and usefulness.
Academic Influence rankings
Academic Influence's rankings of colleges, universities, and disciplinary programs began as a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiative for ranking persons according to their areas of influence. By then associating influential people with their academic affiliations, Academic Influence was able to induce rankings of higher education institutions.
In ranking people and institutions by influence, Academic Influence uses a machine-learning technology implemented by its InfluenceRanking engine. As a consequence, all its influence-based rankings occur without human intervention but instead are algorithmically driven. Academic Influence thereby claims to produce college and university rankings that are not only objective and unbiased, but also non-gameable (features it argues should be present in school rankings but are largely absent from them).
In ranking undergraduate institutions, Academic Influence argues that the best metric for doing so is not influence per se but what it calls "concentrated influence," which normalizes influence by size of the undergraduate student body. The idea is that larger schools will naturally acquire more influence, and thus rank more highly, simply in virtue of their size. Concentrated influence, by controlling for size, attempts to correct for this imbalance.
Academic Influence's top schools for undergraduates as gauged by concentrated influence are as follows. Swarthmore appears not only in the best liberal arts ranking but also in the best overall ranking because even though it is much smaller than Duke or Northwestern, its concentrated influence, by controlling for size, makes it comparable to those schools. Note also that Caltech rises to the top of the best overall ranking because of its enormous influence in relation to its very small size for a research university (its undergraduate body is less than 1,000).
Academic Ranking of World Universities Among the three most watched global university rankings, the 2021 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) started in 2003, and is based upon objective third party data. In 2021, more than 2000 institutions were scrutinized, and the best 1000 universities in the world were ranked. Universities are ranked by several indicators of academic or research performance, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, papers published in Nature and Science, papers indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution. Harvard and Stanford have topped the rankings for the last 11 years.
Council for Aid to Education The Council for Aid to Education publishes a list of the top universities in terms of annual fundraising. Fundraising ability reflects, among other things, alumni and outside donors' views of the quality of a university, as well as the ability of that university to expend funds on top faculty and facilities. 2017 rankings list the top 3 as Harvard, Stanford, and Cornell.
Forbes college rankings
In 2008, Forbes began publishing an annual list of "America's Best Colleges." Alumni salary (self-reported salaries of alumni from PayScale and data from the College Scorecard) constitutes 20% of the score. Student debt loads (as reported by the College Scorecard) constitutes 15% of the score. Graduation Rates (both for all students and for recipients of Pell Grants) constitute 15% of the score. Career success gauges the leadership and entrepreneurial success of alumni in academia, government and various industries. It does not include salaries. It constitutes 15% of the score. Return on Investment divides the total net price of attending a college by the graduate premium received by alumni. It constitutes 15% of the score. The Retention Rate uses IPEDS data to measure the percentage of students who do not drop out after their first year. It constitutes 10% of the score. Academic success measures the number of recent graduates who have gone on to win Fulbright, Truman, Goldwater and Rhodes scholarships. It also uses data from the NCSES to determine the average number of alumni who earned a Ph.D. over the previous three years. It constitutes 10% of the score. Public reputation is not considered, which causes some colleges to score lower than in other lists. A three-year moving average is used to smooth out the scoring.
Forbes rated Princeton the country's best college in its inaugural (2008) list. West Point took the top honor the following year. Williams College was ranked first both in 2010 and 2011, and Princeton returned to the top spot in 2012. In 2013 and 2016, Stanford occupied the No. 1 spot, with elite liberal arts schools Williams and Pomona College topping the rankings in the intervening years. From 2017 to 2019, the magazine has ranked Harvard as the best college in America. In 2021, University of California, Berkeley topped the ranking, becoming the first public school to do so. In 2024, Forbes began a new rankings list called the "New Ivies," universities it says "employers love."
Niche rankings Niche's Best Colleges ranking focuses on academics, diversity, affordability, and student satisfaction.
The Princeton Review Dream Colleges The Princeton Review annually asks students and parents what their dream college is, if cost and ability to get in were not factors.
Revealed preference rankings Several entities have attempted to rank the desirability of U.S. colleges and universities by analyzing datasets of the enrollment decisions of students admitted to multiple institutions, applying choice modelling to their revealed preferences. In this methodology, schools that are chosen more frequently, particularly over other frequently chosen schools, are given more points in an Elo rating system to create the ranking. It can also be used to estimate the likelihood that a student admitted to two different schools will choose one over the other.
The technique was pioneered by Christopher N. Avery et al. using data from 1999. Since 2009, the digital credential service Parchment has published an annual revealed preference ranking using its own data. The New York Times and others have noted that this approach highlights colleges with a distinct focus, which tend to fare well under it.
Social Mobility Index (SMI) rankings The SMI rankings are a collaborative publication from CollegeNet and PayScale. The rankings aim to provide a measure of the extent to which colleges provide upward economic mobility to those that attend. The rankings were created in response to the finding in Science magazine which showed that among developed nations, the United States now provides the least economic opportunity and mobility for its citizens. The rankings were also created to combat the rising costs of tuition, much of which is attributed to the efforts of some colleges to increase their own fame and wealth in ways that increase their rank in media periodicals that put an emphasis on such measures. In 2014, according to the SMI, the top five colleges are Montana Tech, Rowan University, Florida A&M, Cal Poly Pomona, and Cal State Northridge.
The Top American Research Universities The Center for Measuring University Performance has ranked American research universities in the Top American Research Universities since 2000. The methodology is based on data such as research publications, citations, recognitions and funding, as well as undergraduate quality such as SAT scores. The information used can be found in publicly accessible materials, reducing possibilities for manipulation. The methodology is generally consistent from year to year and changes are explained in the publication along with references from other studies.
U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Ranking
The Wall Street Journal College Rankings The Wall Street Journal together with Times Higher Education together release an annual ranking of U.S. colleges and universities. The ranking includes performance indicators such as teaching resources, academic reputation, and postgraduate prospects. By 2023, The Wall Street Journal collaborated with College Pulse in its annual rankings.
Washington Monthly Rankings Washington Monthly'''s rankings began as a research report in 2005, with rankings appearing in the September 2006 issue.
"What will they Learn?" Report – American Council of Trustees and Alumni In 2009, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) began grading colleges and universities based on the strength of their general education requirements. In ACTA's annual What Will They Learn? report, colleges and universities are assigned a letter grade from "A" to "F" based on how many of seven subjects are required of students. The seven subjects are composition, mathematics, foreign language, science, economics, literature and American government or history. The 2011–2012 edition of What Will They Learn? graded 1,007 institutions. In the 2011–2012 edition, 19 schools received an "A" grade for requiring at least six of the subjects the study evaluated. ACTA's rating system has been endorsed by Mel Elfin, founding editor of U.S. News & World Report's rankings. The New York Times higher education blogger Stanley Fish, while agreeing that universities ought to have a strong core curriculum, disagreed with some of the subjects ACTA includes in the core.
Income-based listings
The College Scorecard, published online by the United States Department of Education, allows readers to generate custom rankings by location, graduation rate, cost, and financial outcomes after graduation.
Using data from the College Scorecard, researchers at Georgetown University calculated the return on investment, taking into account the cost of an institution vs. observed increase in earnings among attendees (including those who did and did not graduate with a diploma).
Other rankings Other rankings include the Fiske Guide to Colleges, Money, and Business Insider. Many specialized rankings are available in guidebooks, considering individual student interests, fields of study, geographical location, and affordability. In addition to best overall colleges ranking shown above, Niche also publishes dozens of specialized rankings such as Best Academics, Best Campus Food, Most Conservative Colleges, and Best Technology.
Among the rankings dealing with individual fields of study is the Philosophical Gourmet Report or "Leiter Report",Founded by Brian Leiter then of the University of Texas at Austin, University of Chicago a ranking of philosophy departments. This report has attracted criticism from different viewpoints. Notably, practitioners of continental philosophy, who perceive the Leiter report as unfair to their field, have compiled alternative rankings.
The Gourman Report, last published in 1996, ranked the quality of undergraduate majors and graduate programs. The Daily Beast has also, in the past, published rankings. In 2015, The Economist published a one-time ranking emphasizing the difference between the expected and actual earnings of alumni, as The Economist List of America's Best Colleges.
The Higher Education Rankings, developed and managed by the New York City consulting company IV Research, is a commercial product that provides both general rankings as well as personalized rankings based on a complicated assessment of 6 criteria and 30 indicators.