News & Events
Study in the USA: The Best Colleges Rankings 2024 are Out Now
The annual U.S. News Best Colleges rankings underwent many methodological changes this year. It Includes the addition of various new factors and elimination of five longstanding factors. These changes led to notable year-over-year position changes in the ranking of USA colleges especially in the schools in the middle of the pack.
Even so, from the last few years the top-ranked colleges stayed steady.
Let’s explore the 2024 Best Colleges rankings in the US.
National Universities:
Princeton University in New Jersey (No. 1)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (No. 2)
Harvard University in Massachusetts (No. 3, tie)
Stanford University in California (No. 3, tie)
Yale University in Connecticut (No. 5)
National Liberal Arts Colleges:
Williams College in Massachusetts (No. 1)
Amherst College in Massachusetts (No. 2)
United States Naval Academy in Maryland (No. 3)
Pomona College in California (No. 4, tie)
Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania (No. 4, tie)
Wellesley College in Massachusetts (No. 4, tie)
Methodology Changes
What's New?
The new ranking factors focus on graduation rates of federal loan recipients who enrolled in colleges between 2011 and 2013 fall. These new earning factors assessed the proportion of a college’s federal loan recipients who were able to earn a typical high school graduate salary between 2019-2020. It is the fourth year in which the students have completed their bachelor's degree. This new data is identified by and reported in the College Scorecard. The U.S. government created an online tool that compares the cost and value of higher education institutions of the country.
The modified indicators for the 2024 edition includes: Graduation rates, First-year retention rates, Graduation rate performance, Pell graduation rates, Pell graduation performance, First generation graduation rates, First generation graduation rate performance, Borrower debt, College grads earning more than a high school grad, Peer assessment, Faculty salaries, Student-faculty ratio, Full-time faculty, Financial resources per student, Standardised tests, Citations per publication, Field weighted citation impact, Publications cited in top 5% of journals, Publications cited in top 25% of journals, Class size, Terminal degree faculty, Alumni giving average, Graduate debt proportion borrowing and High school class standing.
Moreover, four new ranking factors were introduced that are related to faculty research for National Universities. These factors are field-weighted citation impact, citations per publication and share of publications cited in the top 5% and 25% for the best cited journals by CiteScore. All these new factors are based on an information analytics company and bibliometric data from Elsevier.
The U.S. News have ranked some bachelors program areas, such as nursing, engineering,
Business and computer science. In 2023 U.S. News added the peer assessment rankings from medium to large bachelors economics and psychology courses.
What Was Eliminated?
This year five long standing factors were dropped from rankings calculations. These are high school class standing, proportion of graduates who borrowed federal loans, alumni giving rate, terminal degree faculty and class size.
Reasons to Change the Methodology
The team of U.S News data researched findings and polls that included Gallup/Strada and USA Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. It helped in identifying the factors that represent the students expectations from a school or college.
Additionally, the ranking utilised the education information of the country which is not available in most of the colleges, according to the data team of USA News.
The US is increasingly working on the education system of the country. It makes the country an ideal student-centric destination for international students.
If you are all set to study in the US, you can contact the Career Clinic to make your study abroad journey smooth and hassle-free. Visit our site to get proper guidance and support in every step of your overseas journey.
