How are colleges ranked? 6 major ranking systems explained

It’s college ranking season once again. Each fall, we see the release of several prominent college and university ranking schemes and a corresponding push by institutions to boast about how well they perform in 1 or more of the rankings.

While there is considerable overlap in the results of the most widely read rankings – with many of the same colleges and universities appearing in the top 10 or top 20 of each – there are also variations. The varying results can be traced largely to differences in the methodology each of the systems uses to derive its rankings.

Understanding those differences can help students and their families better interpret and use the rankings as they begin their college search and compare their top choices. Here is a summary of how 6 major sources come up with their college rankings of 4-year colleges and universities.

U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News has been publishing its college rankings for 40 years, an indication of its staying power and undeniable influence for students, families, and the general reading public.

The publication frequently revises its methodology, and last year it made a number of substantial changes, which remain largely intact this year. The 2025 rankings are based on 17 measures of academic quality for national universities and 13 indicators for the national liberal arts colleges, regional universities, and regional colleges. The weights assigned to each factor varies somewhat depending on the category of institution being compared

Here are the 17 factors and their weights for national universities.

• First-year retention rate (5%)
• 6-year graduation rate (16%)
• Graduation rate performance (10%)
• Pell graduation rates (5.5%): A 4-year rolling average of 6-year graduation rates of Pell Grant students from the fall 2014 through fall 2017 entering classes.
• Pell graduation performance (5.5%): A comparison of 6-year graduation rates among Pell Grant recipients with its 6-year graduation rates for non-Pell recipients, adjusted to give more credit to schools who enroll more Pell students.
• College grads earning more than a high school grad (5%)
• Borrower federal loan debt (5%)
• Faculty salaries (6%)
• Number of full-time faculty (2%)
• Student to faculty ratio (3%)
• Standardized test scores (5%): Median test scores on the SAT or ACT.
• Peer assessment (20%): A subjective measure of how a school is regarded by other presidents, provosts, and admissions officers.
• Financial resources per student (8%): This is measured by dividing total expenditures on instruction, research, public service, academic support, student services and institutional support by the number of full-time equivalent students.
• 4 measures of faculty research (4%): These include: the average number of citations a university’s publications received (1.25); citation impact per paper, normalized for field, year of publication, and publication type (1.25); the share of an institution’s publications published in the top 5% of the most cited journals by Elsevier’s CiteScore (1); and the share of an institution’s publications published in the top 25% of the most cited journals by Elsevier’s CiteScore (.5).

Forbes

Forbes combines 14 measures into 7 factors to determine its rankings.

• Alumni Salary (20%): Using earnings data from PayScale, Forbes counts graduates’ median earnings 6 years and 10 years after graduation. It also uses the College Scorecard, where it derives median earnings data for graduates 6 years and 10 years after they first enrolled at an institution. Each of the 4 income sources is weighted at 5%.
• Debt (15%): 2 variables from College Scorecard are used to measure students’ loan debt. First, median federal loan debt per borrower is multiplied by the percentage of students who take out federal student loans at a given college. Second, each college’s 5-year repayment rate is determined. measured by the percentage of graduates who paid at least $1 toward their federal loan principal within 5 years of entering repayment. Both variables are weighted at 7.5%.
• Graduation Rate (15%): 6-year graduation rates are measured by 2 factors: the 6-year graduation rate for all students (10%), and the graduation rates for Pell Grant recipients (5%).
• Forbes American Leaders List (15%): This list is a measure of the leadership and entrepreneurial success of a college’s graduates. It’s a count of how many graduates place on the most recent Forbes 30 Under 30, Forbes 400, Richest Self-Made Women and Most Powerful Women lists. It also counts members of the current President’s Cabinet, the Supreme Court, Congress and of sitting governors, as well as the most recent winners of the several national prizes.
• Return On Investment (15%): This factor is derived from Third Way’s price-to-earnings premium for each college. It is calculated by dividing the total net price of obtaining a college degree by the post-enrollment earnings boost that students get compared to the typical salary of a high school graduate in their state. It’s weighted at 10%. The price-to-earnings premium for low-income students is weighted at 5%.
• Retention Rate (10%): Forbes calculates a 3-year average retention rate, measuring the percentage of students who choose to stay after their freshman year.
• Academic Success (10%): 2 measures, each weighted at 5%, are used to assess this factor. First is the number of recent graduates who have gone on to win Fulbright, Truman, Goldwater, and Rhodes scholarships. Second is the average number of alumni at a given college who earned a Ph.D. over the last 3 years, weighted by the college’s enrollment.

Washington Monthly

Washington Monthly promotes its rankings, first published in 2005, as the socially conscious alternative to the annual rankings published by U.S. News & World Report, which it criticizes for relying too much on measures of wealth and prestige that are subject to inaccurate reporting or institutional fudging as past allegations involving Columbia University illustrate as an example.

Its rankings consist of 3 equally weighted factors: social mobility, research, and community/national service.

Social mobility combines 7 indices, including 8-year graduation rate, the difference between actual and predicted graduation rate (based on the makeup of the student body), the percentage of students who receive Pell Grants, the number of Pell Grant graduates, the graduation gap between Pell Grant recipients and non-Pell recipients, actual versus predicted earnings of students 9 years after college entry, and the net price of attendance paid by first-time, full-time, in-state students with family incomes below $75,000 per year.

Research consists of 5 criteria, including total institutional research spending; the number of science and engineering PhDs awarded; the number of undergraduate alumni who go on to earn a PhD; prestigious faculty awards; and the proportion of faculty who are members of the National Academies. For those institutions that do not emphasize research, the science and engineering PhD count was not considered.

Service combines 7 factors: the percentage of students in campus ROTC programs; the percentages of students in AmeriCorps and alumni in the Peace Corps relative to college size; whether a college matches Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards; the percentage of work-study grant money spent on community service projects; whether the institution received the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification (a measure of community involvement); the level of an institution’s student voting engagement; and the share of degrees awarded in health, education, and social work majors.

Niche

Niche bases its rankings on 9 factors derived from multiple sources, including surveys of a school’s students about the various elements being considered.

Academics Grade (40%): This uses variables such as acceptance rate, quality of professors, as well as student and alumni surveys regarding academics at the school.

Value Grade (27.5%): This considers variables such as average loan amount, alumni earnings, and student surveys regarding value.

Professors Grade (7.5%): This score is based on factors such as number of awards won by faculty, student-faculty ratio, and student surveys regarding professor quality.

Campus Grade (5%): This grade combines factors like quality of campus food and housing, as well as student surveys about facilities on campus.

Diversity Grade (5%): Diversity considers factors such as ethnic composition of the student body, proportion of international students and out-of-state students, as well as student surveys regarding diversity on campus.

Student Life Grade (5%): A grade that is based on statistics regarding safety, diversity, athletics, and student surveys regarding student life.

Student Surveys on Overall Experience (5%): A survey regarding the overall experience of students and alumni at each school.

Local Area Grade (2.5%): This grade is based on factors such as median rent, local crime rates, access to amenities, and student surveys regarding the local area.

Safety Grade (2.5%): This grade incorporates factors such as campus crime rate, local crime rate, as well as student surveys regarding health and safety services on campus.

Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal has been publishing its college rankings since 2016. Its latest version, conducted with research partners College Pulse and Statista, considers 3 factors, each of which is based on multiple variables, some of which are measured by student surveys.

Student Outcomes (70%). This factor considers variables such as how much a college boosts graduates’ salaries beyond expected levels, how long it takes students to pay off their education costs, and a school’s graduation rate compared to predictions based on student demographics.

Learning Environment (20%). This consists of 5 equally weighted variables: student satisfaction with faculty interactions, feedback, and teaching quality; career networking, advice, and applied learning opportunities; student satisfaction with libraries, internet, and classrooms; how likely students are to recommend their college to others; and the development of personal qualities like moral courage, resilience, and societal contributions.

Diversity (10%). This factor is derived from 4 variables: opportunities to interact with diverse peers, the probability of random pairings of students from different ethnic backgrounds, the proportion of Pell Grant recipients, and the proportion of students with disabilities.

The WSJ rankings also consider 2 of what it calls “contextual figures.” They are average net price (the annual cost of attendance, after grants and scholarships) and value added to graduate salary (the difference in earnings that can be attributed to attending a college compared to high school graduates).

Degreechoices

Degreechoices focuses exclusively on colleges’ investment value. Their ranking system, which looks at whole universities as well as specific programs, does not consider any subjective factors like student life, reputation, prestige, or teaching quality. Instead, they evaluate the ROI of degree programs by looking at 2 variables:

Average net cost: The average amount students pay to attend university after financial aid. It includes all cost factors like remaining tuition, room, board, textbooks, and other fees.

Earnings: The average amount students earn 10 years after enrollment (for colleges) or 4 years after graduation (for specific programs), regardless of their job title, compared to what they would be earning without a college degree.

These variables are plugged into a formula that generates an economic score, used to rank colleges by ROI. Data on cost and earnings is sourced from the federal government: namely College Scorecard and the IPEDS database.

Degreechoices’ focus on economic outcomes helps students make decisions grounded in financial reality.

Final thoughts

As you can see from these summaries, although there are differences in the methodologies, some factors are given considerable weight in all of them. Graduation rates, return on investment, and various measures of student diversity are among the most widely shared elements in the rankings schemes.

No wonder then that there is some widespread agreement on how certain institutions fare. For example, Princeton University is ranked number 1 by Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and U.S. News; it places fifth in Washington Monthly, 2nd for Degreechoices, and 10th for Niche. MIT, Stanford, and Harvard, all rank in the top 10 on each of the 6 lists.

But one finds surprising differences as well. Babson College is ranked 2nd by the Wall Street Journal, but it does not appear in the top 20 of any of the other 5 ranking schemes. Notre Dame University cracks the top 10 for Washington Monthly, but it does not make the top 10 in the other 5 lists. Davidson College, Claremont McKenna College, and Georgia Tech place in the top 10 only for the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, CUNY City College ranks 5th according to Degreechoices, whose ROI-based methodology rewards very affordable degrees.

Students themselves appear to be savvy consumers of college rankings. According to a recent survey of more than 4,000 high school seniors by the Art & Science Group, only about 60% of students surveyed said they used rankings at all, and of those, most indicated they used them mainly to gather information about the colleges they were considering rather than employing them to shape their final decisions.

“Let’s give the kids some credit!” read the report. “Prospective students are by no means the passive consumers of any particular college rankings system, as is sometimes assumed. Rather, most are evidently seeing past the superficial horse race of rankings. A plurality aren’t considering these sources at all. And at least half of those who do are instead using them, among others, to gather information to help make informed decisions about which colleges might be best for them.”

Student’s cautious use of ranking schemes reflects their recognition that not only are college rankings only 1 source of information about their college options, the rankings themselves are subject to numerous methodological problems, which limit their validity. A 2024 study of several popular ranking systems conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago found that they were often plagued by difficulties in data quality, faulty operationalization of the factors used, subjective and possibly unreliable judgments, and questionable validity.

Those kinds of problems are important to keep in mind, tempering the overwrought attention and publicity college rankings are often given.