Serving as a guide for prospective students and their families, the national and regional rankings evaluate nearly 1,700 colleges and universities using up to 17 measures of academic quality. In a show of continued excellence, eight of the top-ranked schools in the ten ranking categories retained their No. 1 position, with the remaining two finishing a strong second.
“For over four decades, Best Colleges has served as a trusted and data-backed resource for students and families navigating the complex college search process,” says LaMont Jones, Ed.D., managing editor for Education at U.S. News. “Over the years, Best Colleges has evolved into a comprehensive tool that reflects the changing landscape of higher education, providing prospective students with a crucial starting point to identify schools that align with their academic and personal goals.”
Core methodology and weighting factors remained the same this year, but small portions of underlying data were adjusted to reflect evolving admissions considerations, cohort representation and student involvement.
“While the general scoring weights and factors remained consistent, the 2026 rankings made a few small adjustments to ensure the results accurately reflect the evolving landscape of higher education,” says Jones. “By considering students’ credit hours and increasing the minimum number of students for a cohort, the rankings deliver a view of institutional investment in students, and graduation and retention rates.”
Top 20 Best National Universities:
1 Princeton University
2 MIT
3 Harvard University
4 Stanford University
4 Yale University
6 University of Chicago
7 Duke University
7 Johns Hopkins University
7 Northwestern University
7 University of Pennsylvania
11 Caltech
12 Cornell University
13 Brown University
13 Dartmouth College
15 Columbia University
15 UC Berkeley
17 Rice University
17 UCLA
17 Vanderbilt University
20 Carnegie Mellon University
20 University of Michigan
20 University of Notre Dame
20 Washington University in St. Louis
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Top 20 Public Schools:
1 UC Berkeley
2 UCLA
3 University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
4 UNC - Chapel Hill
4 University of Virginia
6 UC San Diego
7 University of Florida
7 UT Austin
9 Georgia Tech
9 UC Davis
9 UC Irvine
12 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
12 University of Wisconsin, Madison
14 UC Santa Barbara
15 The Ohio State University
16 Rutgers University, New Brunswick
16 University of Maryland, College Park
16 University of Washington
19 Purdue University - Main Campus
19 University of Georgia
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