Williams College and Amherst College once again ranked at the top of the US NewsBest Liberal Arts Colleges 2026 ranking, with the US Naval Academy moving up to #3 (from #4 in 2025) and Swarthmore moving down to #4.
The biggest jump came from Mount Holyoke College, who went from #34 in 2025 to #29 this year.
Top 50 Best Liberal Arts Colleges:
1 Williams College
2 Amherst College
3 US Naval Academy
4 Swarthmore
5 Bowdoin College
5 US Air Force Academy
7 Claremont McKenna College
7 Pomona College
7 Wellesley College
10 Carleton College
10 Harvey Mudd College
10 US Military Academy at West Point
13 Barnard College
13 Davidson College
13 Grinnell College
13 Hamilton College
13 Middlebury College
13 Smith College
13 Vassar College
13 Wesleyan University
21 Washington & Lee University
22 Colgate
22 University of Richmond
24 Bates College
24 Colby College
24 Haverford College
27 College of the Holy Cross
28 Macalester College
29 Mount Holyoke College
30 Bryn Mawr College
30 Bucknell University
30 Colorado College
30 Lafayette College
34 Denison University
35 Franklin & Marshall College
35 Occidental College
37 Pitzer College
37 Scripps College
37 Skidmore College
37 Soka University of America
37 Spelman College
37 Trinity College
37 Trinity University
44 Union College
45 Berea College
45 Dickinson College
45 Furman College
45 Kenyon College
45 The University of the South
50 Connecticut College
50 Hillsdale College
50 St. Olaf College
50 Wabash College
50 Wheaton College (IL)
We never hear about Soka but it’s always on the list.
Anyone have experience ?
Pick your Trinity - equally ranked. Both have an ABET accredited major (engineering) although the University’s is Eng Science. University has a B school.
Soka is definitely not a “normal” college, including that it doesn’t have a “normal” curriculum structure. Also way more International students than “normal”.
Whether any of that is a good or bad is of course an entirely different question, but it is a good example of why generic rankings make little sense.
Not that it matters much, but looks like Harvey Mudd slid into the top ten joining its two more well known Claremont College sibs. Pitzer and Scripps are twinning in the rankings too.
One of the notorious patterns in the US News rankings is they seem to struggle with private STEM-focused colleges.
Mudd being in the 20s was an example of that. Of course as usual with STEM-focused colleges, they are not right for everyone, and thus generic rankings make no sense.
But if you ARE going to include STEM-focused colleges in generic rankings, that did not seem to be capturing how people typically saw Mudd.
So yes, Mudd versus CMC, say, being more a choice of focus than a choice of better or worse seems a lot more realistic.
