Choosing a college is a major life decision — that’s why the Wall Street Journal worked with College Pulse and Statista to create a trusted guide for applicants and their families. The Wall Street Journal/College Pulse 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S. ranking rates the top 400 universities in the country.
The aim of the ranking is to provide guidance to prospective students and families, while recognizing the schools doing an outstanding job in higher education.
Rather than focusing on colleges’ wealth or reputation in and of themselves, these rankings expand the importance of student outcomes: graduation rates and graduate salaries. Critically, we put emphasis on measuring the value added by colleges — not simply measuring their students’ success, but focusing on the contribution the college makes to that success. For students, we believe this ranking will help them identify which colleges will do the most to help them graduate and make more money.
Key highlights include:
- Princeton University takes top honors in our new ranking of the best colleges in the U.S., with five Ivy League schools in the top 10 overall.
- The University of Florida and the New Jersey Institute of Technology are the highest-ranking public schools.
- Several small liberal-arts colleges, including Amherst College, Claremont McKenna College and Swarthmore College, also performed well in the ranking. The schools, which each have fewer than 2,000 undergraduate students, placed eighth, ninth and 11th, respectively.
You can dive into the rankings here, and learn more about the methodology here.
