US News Best Colleges 2026 Rankings: US Berkeley Named Top Public School, Princeton Best National University

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

Click here for full ranking.

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

Click here for full ranking.

Northeastern has returned to the top 50, rising from 54 to 46.

Brandeis continues its slide coming in at 69. It had once been ranked about 38 or so.

Did UF drop a slot ? At one point they were #5 public.

US News lists ties alphabetically, two schools at #4 and four schools at #7. What am I missing, how are you distinguishing among the ties to arrive at the ranks you posted here, @CC_Sorin ?

I have to say that I really like all of the ties. It feels more like a tier list which makes WAY more sense to me. Who can discern between a #7 and a #8 anyway? How much can one discern between a #15 and a #30 for that matter…

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I’m guessing it’s merely an editing issue and not an attempt at breaking ties. The list with ties (and expanding to top 20) is as below…

@evergreen5, sorry for that, I corrected it now.

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Sorry, I cross posted with you.

Interesting to me how UC Merced has raced up the rankings. It’s #57, tie with Villanova and above GWU, Penn State, Santa Clara, Stony Brook and UMN which all tie for next place down. Wonder if /when perceptions of its desirability will ever catch up to that (including within CA).

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I haven’t been following continually but I see Tulane is 69 too. I seem to recall both Brandeis and Tulane were 40-ish when D19 was applying.

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UCR and UCSC are both ranked significantly below Merced, yet for sure most kids I know of would rather go to UCSC (lowest ranked UC) than either of the other two. Or probably even rather SDSU which is ranked lower than all the UCs. Which maybe also goes to show that kids are not quite as hung up on rankings as some people here on CC would have us believe.

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My kids would prefer UCM over UCSC and UCR. They suspect that racism is a big factor in how UCM is perceived by many students.

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Tulane had been ~40 (38?) up until a couple of years ago when USNWR reshuffled how they calculate the rankings - which shifted Tulane to #73 I believe.

It’s back up 4 spots - and yet I suspect it’s the same school as it was. Did USNWR further tweek their calculation or did the school do better in one of the metrics…

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Does anybody know offhand (I assume this is somewhere in the methodology) why within the CSU system, colleges called “CSU -something” or “something -state” are ranked in the national rankings but the Cal Polys are only in the regional rankings?

Do the ones in the national rankings offer doctorates? The Cal Polys don’t.

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My UCLA senior is pretty annoyed that UCLA is now #2. (I mean, not really because it’s not that important relatively speaking, but irked). It’s been number 1 for years. And what will UCLA do with all the flags??

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For both my kids, this has been due to location. My husband‘s family is from the inland empire and they’ve spent their lives visiting the area. My SIL went to Riverside as a commuter student in the 90s. UCSC may not have the high ranking but it has the beach, the forests and a fun and funky little town. That is more than enough for it to be appealing over Merced or Riverside areas on one dimension. That’s not to say both schools can’t be a wonderful experience, of course!

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Any thoughts on what is driving significant movement in the ranking of some schools - to the downside?

Wake Forest for example has gone from consistently ranking in the mid 20s to 51. It may be the largest drop of any school.

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I guess that’s it (though that is a strange criterion to distinguish “national” from “regional” imo - I can’t find numbers but I’d suspect CPSLO has one of the higher OOS enrollments of all the CSUs - seems like lack of phds should be an academic criterion rather than a geographic one?)