Following MIT, Harvard is the list's second-ranked university. Yale University is fourth, after Stanford University Duke University is ranked fifth and Princeton University sixth.
For a list of best colleges by state, follow these links:
The list was assembled using data from the United States Department of Education and surveys of students and faculty. Academics, including the quality of professors and acceptance rates were the most important factor considered in these rankings, according to Niche. '
Also considered was the average student loan amount at each school, alumni earnings, student-faculty ratio, student body diversity, campus food and housing, athletics and the quality of the local areas surrounding the colleges.
The Top 25 nationally is as follows:
- 1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA
- 2. Harvard University in Cambridge, MA
- 3. Stanford University in Stanford, CA
- 4. Yale University in New Haven, CT
- 5. Duke University in Durham, NC
- 6. Princeton University in Princeton, NJ
- 7. Rice University in Houston, TX
- 8. California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA
- 9. Brown University in Providence, RI
- 10. University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA
- 11. Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN
- 12. Columbia University in New York, NY
- 13. Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH
- 14. Northwestern University in Evanston, IL
- 15. Washington University in Saint Louis, MO
- 16. University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, IN
- 17. University of Chicago in Chicago, IL
- 18. Cornell University in Ithaca, NY
- 19. University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA
- 20. Pomona College in Claremont, CA
- 21. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD
- 22. Carnegie Melon University in Pittsburgh, PA
- 23. University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI
- 24. University of California in Los Angeles CA
- 25. Georgetown University in Washington, DC
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