Education
Northwestern, UChicago Remain Among Nation’s Top 10 Colleges in US News List
(Joe Hendrickson / iStock)
Northwestern University and the University of Chicago remain among the top 10 colleges in the country, according to new rankings published by U.S. News and World Report.
Both Chicago-area universities fell slightly in the rankings published Tuesday, coming in a tie for ninth place, but they remained the highest-ranked schools both in Illinois and the Midwest as a whole.
Northwestern ranked in seventh place last year, while the University of Chicago was sixth.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was the next highest-ranked Illinois school, jumping up two spots into a tie for 34th place in the new rankings. The University of Illinois Chicago was tied for 95th place, while the Illinois Institute of Technology and Loyola University Chicago tied for 121st place.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology took the top spot in the latest rankings, unseating Princeton University, which fell to second place. Harvard and Yale were ranked third and fourth, respectively, followed by the California Institute of Technology and Stanford in a tie for fifth.
Beyond the top universities, U.S. News and World Report also published rankings of the top liberal arts schools and regional colleges. Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington (No. 2) and Illinois College in Jacksonville (No. 4) were ranked among the top five regional colleges in the Midwest.
The U.S. News rankings are based on 17 weighted measures of academic quality and success. That methodology “heavily emphasizes” student outcomes, the outlet said, including indicators such as graduation and retention rates, social mobility for low-income students and post-graduate earnings.
“With families increasingly scrutinizing the true cost and return on investment of a college degree, our goal is to provide clear, actionable data,” LaMont Jones, managing editor for education at U.S. News — the self-described “global authority” in education rankings — said in a statement. “The 2027 Best Colleges rankings serve as a vital decision-making tool for prospective students and parents, offering transparent metrics on outcomes, affordability and academic quality to help families make fully informed financial and educational investments.”
