Top 200 Colleges in the US in 2024-2025

For the second consecutive year, Princeton University has secured the #1 position by excelling in all 14 criteria used by Forbes to assess the top 500 American colleges, which offer the best educational, financial, and career outcomes. There has been notable movement on the list, with Rice University in Houston breaking into the top ten for the first time, jumping to #9 from #22 last year, partly due to graduates’ low student debt. Earlier this year, Rice was also recognized as one of ten private institutions, along with ten public ones, named as “New Ivies.”

While acceptance rate is not factored in the rankings, this year we aimed to ease some high school students’ admissions anxiety by highlighting outstanding schools that don’t have the ultra-competitive sub-10% acceptance rates of institutions like Princeton, Stanford, or MIT. Thirty-eight of our top 100 schools accept more than 30% of applicants, and 16 of them admit 50% or more—showing that these great schools offer less admissions pressure. Additionally, since school size doesn’t impact our rankings, we’ve introduced a sublist of the top 50 small colleges for students seeking a supportive environment and smaller class sizes. As in previous years, we’ve also highlighted the top 25 public colleges, the top 25 private colleges with generous financial aid, and the top 25 schools offering the best return on investment.

Here is the list of the top 200 colleges in the US in 2024-2025:

Rank	Name
1	Princeton University
2	Stanford University
3	MIT
4	Yale University
5	University of California, Berkeley
6	Columbia University
7	University of Pennsylvania
8	Harvard University
9	Rice University
10	Cornell University
11	Northwestern University
12	Johns Hopkins University
13	University of California, Los Angeles
14	University of Chicago
15	Vanderbilt University
16	Dartmouth College
17	Williams College
18	Brown University
19	Claremont McKenna College
20	Duke University
21	University of California, San Diego
22	California Institute of Technology
23	Wellesley College
24	Amherst College
25	Bowdoin College
26	University of Florida
27	Swarthmore College
28	University of Southern California
29	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
30	Washington University in St. Louis
31	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
32	Georgetown University
33	Emory University
34	University of Virginia
35	University of California, Santa Barbara
36	Brigham Young University
37	Pomona College
38	Georgia Institute of Technology
39	University of California, Irvine
40	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
41	University of Maryland, College Park
42	University of Notre Dame
43	University of California, Davis
44	University of Washington, Seattle
45	Colgate University
46	University of Texas, Austin
47	Washington and Lee University
48	Davidson College
49	New York University
50	University of Wisconsin, Madison
51	Middlebury College
52	Tufts University
53	Boston University
54	Wesleyan University
55	William & Mary
56	Barnard College
57	Cal Poly SLO
58	Carnegie Mellon University
59	Boston College
60	Lafayette College
61	Santa Clara University
62	University of Georgia
63	Purdue University
64	Lehigh University
65	Florida State University
66	Hamilton College
67	George Washington University
68	North Carolina State University, Raleigh
69	Franklin W Olin College of Engineering
70	Texas A&M University, College Station
71	Trinity College (CT)
72	Haverford College
73	Northeastern University
74	CUNY, Baruch College
75	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
76	Binghamton University, SUNY
77	San Diego State University
78	Cooper Union
79	Rutgers University
80	Bates College
81	Grinnell College
82	University of Miami (FL)
83	Virginia Tech
84	Stony Brook University, SUNY
85	University of Connecticut
86	Ohio State University
87	Villanova University
88	Wake Forest University
89	California State University, Long Beach
90	Michigan State University
91	University of Rochester
92	Indiana University, Bloomington
93	Bucknell University
94	University of Utah
95	Trinity University (TX)
96	Babson College
97	University of California, Riverside
98	Clemson University
99	Southern Methodist University
100	California State University, Fullerton
101	University of Richmond
102	Vassar College
103	College of the Holy Cross
104	University of Colorado, Boulder
105	Brandeis University
106	University of San Diego
107	University of South Florida
108	Syracuse University
109	Arizona State University, Tempe
110	University of Central Florida
111	Colorado College
112	University of Arizona
113	University of Oklahoma, Norman
114	Marquette University
115	University of Houston
116	University of Missouri, Columbia
117	Auburn University
118	Fordham University
119	Oregon State University
120	CUNY, The City College of New York
121	Rhodes College
122	Skidmore College
123	College of New Jersey
124	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
125	Pepperdine University
126	University of Texas, Dallas
127	University of Delaware
128	University of Massachusetts, Amherst
129	Dickinson College
130	CUNY, Hunter College
131	University of Illinois at Chicago
132	Loyola Marymount University
133	University of Portland
134	University at Buffalo
135	Smith College
136	James Madison University
137	San Francisco State University
138	Florida International University
139	Louisiana State University
140	Kenyon College
141	American University
142	University of Tennessee, Knoxville
143	University of Pittsburgh
144	Washington State University
145	Colby College
146	Drexel University
147	Tulane University
148	University of Oregon
149	Furman University
150	Stevens Institute of Technology
151	University of Kansas
152	Baylor University
153	Gonzaga University
154	Iowa State University
155	University of Iowa
156	SUNY, Geneseo
157	University of Denver
158	University of Arkansas
159	Elon University
160	University of Kentucky
161	Connecticut College
162	Saint Louis University
163	University of South Carolina
164	CUNY, Brooklyn College
165	University of San Francisco
166	Worcester Polytechnic Institute
167	University of Nevada-Reno
168	Sonoma State University
169	University of Dayton
170	DePauw University
171	Oklahoma State University
172	University of Hawaii, Manoa
173	Manhattan College
174	Towson University
175	Saint Mary’s College of California
176	St. Lawrence University
177	Reed College
178	Kalamazoo College
179	Creighton University
180	Bryn Mawr College
181	University of Vermont
182	University of Alabama
183	Kansas State University
184	Harvey Mudd College
185	California State University, Fresno
186	Bentley University
187	University of California, Santa Cruz
188	Florida Atlantic University
189	University of Wyoming
190	Wofford College
191	University of Nebraska, Lincoln
192	Temple University
193	New Jersey Institute of Technology
194	Virginia Military Institute
195	Hobart and William Smith Colleges
196	Pennsylvania State University
197	Oberlin College
198	Miami University (OH)
199	CUNY, Queens College
200	Chapman University

Here is an article for colleges with the most depressed student bodies.