The Mission
There are plenty of reasons to attend a particular college or university. But students’ top ones involve academic reputation, cost of attendance and return on investment, according to several different surveys, such as Why Higher Ed? by Strada and Gallup and Factors That Influence Student College Choice by the U.S. Department of Education.
The 40th annual edition of Best Colleges took those priorities into account. Based on statistics, the top-ranked schools provided ample classroom resources for students and faculty; conferred bachelor’s degrees at high rates; and produced graduates who entered the workforce with manageable debt and worthwhile starting salaries.
Rankings aside, student preferences matter too – including which majors are offered, the clubs and activities available, and the ease of fitting in with life on campus. This is why U.S. News pairs its rankings with detailed profiles and user reviews for each school, plus a search feature to help discover them. There are also customized rankings and lists like the Best Value Schools rankings and listings of schools with greatest campus diversity.
Altogether, the rankings are a guide for discovering the best fit schools predicated on academics and personal considerations. This aligns with U.S. News’ mission of helping consumers, business leaders and policy officials make important decisions in their lives through independent reporting, data and rankings, journalism, and advice. For more about this, read Why U.S. News Ranks the Best Colleges and Universities.
Eligibility
The Best Colleges guide is designed to connect soon-to-be and recent high school graduates with traditional four-year baccalaureate programs in the U. S. That is reflected in the ranking factors and the following eligibility criteria for the overall rankings:
- Be located in the U. S.
- Have regional accreditation
- Be designated as a bachelor’s degree-granting institution in Carnegie’s Basic Classification but not designated as a “highly specialized” school
- Enroll at least 100 undergraduate students
- Have financial expenditure figures available in the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Data Center
- Have a six-year bachelor’s degree graduation rate of full-time, first-year bachelor’s degree-seeking students
- Actively accepting new applicants for first-year, first-time students
Schools that were ineligible because they were too highly specialized or did not have a baccalaureate degree graduation rate still received a profile on usnews.com; and while they displayed as unranked for the overall rankings, they may still have been eligible for discipline-specific rankings and other evaluative lists. In contrast, ineligible institutions that lacked accreditation, were closing, or were mostly distance education entities do not have Best Colleges profiles on usnews.com. Accredited institutions with distance education baccalaureate programs – including degree completion programs – could be ranked and have profiles in the separate rankings for the Best Online Bachelor’s Programs.
As always, schools’ eligibility to be ranked was not contingent on their participation in U.S. News’ surveys. But the vast majority of schools U.S. News surveyed did report data to U.S. News, including 99 of the top 100 ranked National Universities and 96 of the top 100 National Liberal Arts Colleges.
How Ranks Are Determined
U.S. News ranked nearly 1,500 U.S. four-year bachelor’s degree-granting institutions, grouped within 10 distinct overall rankings where colleges and universities were compared with schools that shared their academic mission:
- National Universities offer a range of undergraduate majors, plus master’s and doctoral programs, and emphasize faculty research or award professional practice doctorates.
- National Liberal Arts Colleges focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education and award at least 50% of their degrees in the arts and sciences.
- Regional Universities offer a broad scope of undergraduate degrees and some master’s degree programs but few, if any, doctoral programs. We ranked them in four geographical regions: North, South, Midwest and West.
- Regional Colleges focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than 50% of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines. Some regional colleges award two-year associate degrees as well as bachelor’s degrees. We ranked them in four geographical regions: North, South, Midwest and West.
The above were mapped for the third consecutive year with the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education’s 2021 update to its Basic Classification system (see details here).
Each ranking has ranking factors – outlined below – for which each eligible school was scored on its underlying data. These scores were standardized (z-scored) so they were compared with the means and standard deviations among all other ranked schools. In other words, the distance between two schools on any ranking factor is not determined by how their data compared head-to-head so much as how their data compared with every ranked school.
Next, the standardized values were weighted and totaled to determine the overall score from which the rankings were derived. The overall scores were rescaled so that the top performer(s) in each ranking displays an overall score of 100. Others’ overall scores are on a 0-99 scale reflecting the distance from their ranking’s top-performing school(s). Those placing outside the top 90% are still ranked but display their ranking’s bottom decile range (e.g., No. 118-130) instead of their individual ranks (e.g., No. 126).
The Ranking Factors
Below is an outline of the 17 ranking factors. Although the 2025 edition’s ranking formula is mostly intact from the previous year’s, there were some changes. As always, changes in methodology together with changes in individual schools’ data can contribute to significant changes to schools’ rankings.
For a deeper dive into how the ranking factors were calculated, including the new ones, see the article, “A More Detailed Look at the Ranking Factors.” Also see the Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings blog for insights behind these changes.
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