Several Illinois and midwestern colleges and universities landed in U.S. News & World Report's newest ranking of "Best Colleges" for 2025, with many moving up spots on the prestigious list.
The 40th edition of the annual report, released Tuesday, ranked nearly 1,500 colleges and universities using 17 ranking criteria and weights, editors said, including graduation rates, borrower debt, financial resources, peer assessment, faculty salaries, among others.
According to editors, this year's ranking formula was nearly the same as the one used in2024, which saw major methodical changes. A more detailed look at how colleges were ranked can be found here.
While the top five schools on the list could be found on either coast, Northwestern University in suburban Evanston made the list at No. 6, in a four-way tie with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Duke University in Durham and California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
In last year's ranking, Northwestern University landed at No. 9.
In a tie with Cornell University, The University of Chicago landed in the No. 11 spot, moving up from No. 12 on last year's list. Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana, tied for the No. 18 spot with Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Two other Midwestern universities made the Top 25, with the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and Washington University in St. Louis part of a three-way tie for the No. 21 spot.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which last year ranked at No. 35, moved up two spots for the 2025 list. The University of Wisconsin-Madison dropped four spots, coming in this year at No. 39.
In addition to ranking the best national universities, the report also ranked National Liberal Arts Colleges, where Carleton College, in Northfield, Minnesota, ranked at No. 8.
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Editors also released a list of colleges that were "Top Performers on Social Mobility" for both liberal arts schools and national universities, which measured how well schools graduated economically disadvantaged students. Lake Forest College, a liberal arts college in suburban Lake Forest, tied Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, for the top spot on that list.
Here's the list of the Top 25 schools that ranked on the report's list of "Best Colleges" for 2025:
No. 1: Princeton University - Princeton, New Jersey
No. 2: Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Cambridge, Massachusetts
No. 3: Harvard University - Cambridge, Massachusetts
No. 4: Stanford University - Stanford, California
No. 5: Yale University - New Haven, Connecticut
No. 6 - four-way tie: California Institute of Technology - Pasadena, California; Duke University - Durham, North Carolina; Johns Hopkins University - Baltimore, Maryland; Northwestern University - Evanston, Illinois
No. 10: University of Pennsylvania - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
No. 11 - two-way tie: Cornell University - Ithaca, New York; University of Chicago - Chicago, Illinois
No. 13 - two-way tie: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island; Columbia University - New York, New York
No. 15 -- two-way tie: Dartmouth College - Hanover, New Hampshire; University of California, Los Angeles - Los Angeles, California
No. 17: University of California, Berkeley - Berkeley, California
No. 18 - three-way tie: Rice University - Houston, Texas; University of Notre Dame - South Bend, Indiana; Vanderbilt University - Nashville, Tennessee
No. 21: Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor - Ann Arbor, Michigan; Washington University in St. Louis -- St. Louis, Missouri
No. 24: Emory University -- Atlanta, Georgia; Georgetown University - Washington, D.C.; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia
Due to the tie, there was no university listed in the 25th spot. The next university that made the list was University of North Carolina Chapel Hill at No. 27.
You can find the full report and list of schools here.
