If you’re looking to enroll in the very top national university, the choice is yet again Princeton University.
The ivy-covered campus in New Jersey tops U.S. News & World Report’s 2022 list of the best national universities in the U.S., scoring a perfect 100 in the magazine’s rating system. Princeton also took the No. 1 spot on the 2021 list.
But, the colleges closer to home in Berks County also show well in the rankings.
U.S News & World Report has been ranking colleges since 1987. This year’s list was complied by looking at data from more than 1,850 schools.
Rankings are determined by how schools rate on 17 different metrics, including things like graduation and retention rates, academic reputation, faculty resources, selectivity, alumni giving rates and graduate indebtedness. Each school is given a score out of 100 possible points.
Columbia University, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology finished in a three-way tie for second in the rankings with scores of 97, just behind Princeton’s perfect 100 performance. The rest of the top 10 national schools are:
5. Yale University
6. Stanford University (tie)
6. University of Chicago (tie)
8. University of Pennsylvania
9. California Institute of Technology (tie)
9. Duke University (tie)
9. Johns Hopkins University (tie)
9. Northwestern University (tie)
If you’re interested in a liberal arts education, the rankings show the top school in 2022 is Williams College in Massachusetts. Like Princeton, it scored a perfect 100 in its category and kept the top spot that it also held in 2021.
The rest of the top 10 liberal arts colleges are:
2. Amherst College
3. Swarthmore College
4. Pomona College
5. Wellesley College
6. Bowdoin College (tie)
6. United States Naval Academy (tie)
8. Claremont McKenna College
9. Carleton College (tie)
9. Middlebury College (tie)
For students looking to stay close to home, the top 10 in Pennsylvania are:
1. University of Pennsylvania
2. Carnegie Mellon University
3. Lehigh University (tie)
3. Villanova University (tie)
5. University of Pittsburgh
6. Penn State University
7. Drexel University (tie)
7. Temple University (tie)
9. Duquesne University (tie)
9. Thomas Jefferson University (tie)
The top liberal arts colleges in Pennsylvania are:
1. Swarthmore College
2. Haverford College
3. Bryn Mawr College
4. Bucknell University (tie)
4. Lafayette College (tie)
6. Franklin & Marshall College
7. Dickinson College
8. Gettysburg College
9. Muhlenberg College
10. Juniata College
Local colleges
Along with ranking the overall best schools in the country, U.S. News & World Report also provides a host of other college rankings.
The report features list for about two dozen categories including for the best liberal arts schools, best regional schools, best engineering schools and best public schools.
Three Berks County schools were included in those lists.
Albright College was included in the 168-222 group for national liberal arts colleges and ranked as the No. 32 national liberal arts college for social mobility.
Alvernia University was ranked No. 97 for regional universities in the north region. It also ranked as the north region’s No. 24 school for undergraduate teaching and No. 76 school for social mobility.
Kutztown University checked in at No. 123 of the list of best regional universities in the north region. It ranked No. 43 for public universities in the region and No. 118 for social mobility in the region.
Other rankings
Repeating its performance from the 2021 list, University of California Los Angeles was again named to best public university in the U.S The rest of the top 10 public schools in the country according to U.S. News & World Report are:
2. University of California Berkeley
3. University of Michigan
4. University of Virginia
5. University of California Santa Barbara (tie)
5. University of Florida (tie)
5. University of North Carolina (tie)
8. University of California San Diego
9. University of California Irvine
10. Georgia Institute of Technology
For those looking to get the best bang for their buck, U.S. News & World Report rates schools academic quality alongside the net cost of attendance for a student who receives the average level of need-based financial aid. The top 10 best value schools are:
1. Yale University
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. Harvard University
4. Princeton University
5. Rice University
6. Brigham Young University, Provo
7. Columbia University
8. Vanderbilt University
9. Stanford University
10. University of North Carolina
A complete list of the U.S. News & World Report rankings can be found at usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities.
