The latest Wall Street Journal/College Pulse rankings are out and Stanford returns to the top of this list for the first time since the 2017 rankings.
Unlike other school rankings, this list emphasizes one point: How well did the college prepare students for financial success? More than any other factor, it rewards the boost an institution provides to its graduates’ salaries, beyond an estimate of what they could have expected from attending any college.
Best Colleges in the America 2026:
- Stanford University
- Babson College
- Yale University
- Princeton University
- Harvard University
- Claremont McKenna College
- UC Berkeley
- Columbia
- Penn
- Davidson College
- MIT
- Bentley University
- UC Davis
- UC Merced
- Harvey Mudd College
- Georgia Tech
- San Jose State University
- Cornell University
- Loyola University Maryland
- University of Notre Dame