A person passes in front of the Great Dome on Killian Court at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., on Wednesday, June 2, 2021.Photographer: Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg via Getty Images
WASHINGTON - Colleges and universities across the country have been ranked in U.S. News & World Report’s 2027 Best Colleges rankings.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology claimed the No. 1 spot among national universities, replacing Princeton University, which had held the top position consecutively since the 2012 edition.
Princeton ranked No. 2, followed by Harvard University at No. 3. Williams College again earned the top ranking among national liberal arts colleges.
Methodology:
The 42nd edition evaluated nearly 1,700 colleges and universities.
U.S. News assessed schools using up to 17 measures of academic quality and student success. More than half of each school’s score was based on student outcomes, including graduation and retention rates, social mobility for low-income students and post-graduate earnings.
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The rankings also considered academic peer assessments and faculty resources. U.S. News published individual rankings for the top 90% of schools in each category and provided decile ranges for the remaining institutions.
Students and families are encouraged to consider rankings alongside factors such as location, net price, financial aid, campus life and academic programs when choosing a college.
Dig deeper:
Here are the college rankings:
Paying for college
Why you should care:
Across the country, the number of borrowers with defaulted student loans jumped by more than 4.2 million from April 2025 to March 2026, according to an Associated Press analysis. The surge includes many who went off track in 2024, when loan payments started coming due again after a pandemic-era freeze.
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Hundreds of thousands more are months behind on payments, and another surge in defaults could be on the way. Millions of borrowers are facing higher monthly payments as the government dismantles its most affordable income-driven repayment option, the SAVE plan, one of several changes the Education Department says are intended to simplify a fragmented system.
Borrowers enter default after missing payments for nine months, and the consequences can upend lives. It hurts credit ratings and can lead to the debt being sent to collections.
The federal government can garnish wages and Social Security payments from borrowers in default, but the Trump administration in January walked back plans to begin collections on their loans. A Moody’s Analytics report this spring said garnishments are likely to begin within the next year, warning of "an additional headwind in an increasingly fragile economy."
The Source: The Associated Press contributed to this report. The information in this story came from the 2027 Best Colleges rankings published by U.S. News & World Report. The rankings evaluated nearly 1,700 colleges and universities using factors such as graduation and retention rates, social mobility, post-graduate earnings, academic reputation and faculty resources. This story was reported from Los Angeles.