Here’s how New England colleges fared in U.S. News’s 2024 rankings

MIT came in second, just behind Princeton. Harvard and Yale also placed highly on the closely watched annual college rankings.

U.S. News & World Report released its annual lists of the country’s top universities and colleges this week, and several New England schools were once again ranked highly on the heavily scrutinized list.

The top spot on the universities list was awarded to Princeton University, but the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came in just behind at No. 2 and Harvard University was ranked third. Last year’s rankings had the same top three universities in the same order, except for the fact that Stanford University was tied with Harvard.

Stanford fell to fourth but still managed to beat out Yale University, which was ranked fifth. Other universities in the region didn’t quite manage to crack the top 10 but still ranked highly. Brown University was ranked 13th, Dartmouth College was ranked 15th, Boston College and Tufts University tied for the 37th spot, Boston University was ranked 41st, Northeastern University was ranked 54th, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst was ranked 58th.

Williams College was at the top of the colleges list, followed by Amherst College at No. 2. Bowdoin College was ranked fifth, and Wellesley College ranked seventh.

The U.S. News rankings have been both highly influential and publicly disparaged by leaders in higher education. In 2022, Yale and Harvard announced that their law schools would no longer cooperate with the rankings, citing concerns with the publication’s methodology.

That prompted a wider boycott, and notable officials weighed in. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said that those in higher education need to “stop worshiping at the false altar of U.S. News,” and that college rankings in general “have created an unhealthy obsession with selectivity.”

A total of 62 law schools, almost a third of the 196 schools ranked, did not provide data to U.S. News for last year’s rankings, The Washington Post found. A number of medical schools joined the boycott as well, but most institutions continued to submit data for the undergraduate rankings.

Still, U.S. News changed its rankings formula last year to better reflect retention and graduation rates for students who received need-based Pell grants. Other metrics related to first-generation college students were also added. This resulted in a surge of public universities climbing the rankings, while some private schools took a hit.

A detailed breakdown of the current methodology used by U.S. News can be found online. It evaluates more than 1,500 colleges with as many as 17 “ranking factors” such as graduation rates, borrower debt, faculty numbers, and peer assessment.

Top 10 American universities

• 1: Princeton University (NJ)
• 2: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MA)
• 3: Harvard University (MA)
• 4: Stanford University (CA)
• 5: Yale University (CT)
• 6: Tie between California Institute of Technology (CA), Duke University (NC), Johns Hopkins University (MD), and Northwestern University (IL)
• 10: University of Pennsylvania (PA)

New England universities in the rest of the top 100

• 13: Brown University (RI)
• 15: Dartmouth College (NH)
• 37: Tie between Boston College (MA) and Tufts University (MA)
• 41: Boston University (MA)
• 54: Northeastern University (MA)
• 58: University of Massachusetts – Amherst (MA)
• 63: Brandeis University (MA)
• 70: University of Connecticut (CT)
• 86: Worcester Polytechnic Institute (MA)

New England colleges in the top 50

• 1: Williams College (MA)
• 2: Amherst College (MA)
• 5: Bowdoin College (ME)
• 7: Wellesley College (MA)
• 14: Tie between Smith College (MA) and Wesleyan University (CT)
• 19: Middlebury College (VT)
• 25: Colby College (ME)
• 26: Bates College (ME)
• 28: College of the Holy Cross (MA)
• 34: Mount Holyoke College (MA)
• 36: Trinity College (CT)