U.S. News Best Colleges 2026 — National Universities

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36 institutions

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https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities

An index earns its place here when an institution quotes it. Whether the wider world has heard of the publisher is beside the point: a table somebody has advertised a placement in is a table that counts.

Recorded placements 36

Institutions the Index records in this table. A placement here is a placement anywhere: the Index reports each institution's best, whatever its scope.

Rank	Institution	Claim
1	Princeton University	1st in the world
2	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	2nd in the world
3	Harvard University	3rd in the world
=4	Stanford University	4th in the world
=4	Yale University	4th in the world
6	University of Chicago	6th in the world
=7	University of Pennsylvania	7th in the world
=7	Johns Hopkins University	7th in the world
=7	Northwestern University	7th in the world
=7	Duke University	7th in the world
11	California Institute of Technology	11th in the world
12	Cornell University	12th in the world
13	Brown University	13th in the world
=15	Columbia University	15th in the world
=15	University of California, Berkeley	15th in the world
=17	University of California, Los Angeles	17th in the world
=17	Vanderbilt University	17th in the world
=17	Rice University	17th in the world
=20	University of Michigan-Ann Arbor	20th in the world
=20	Carnegie Mellon University	20th in the world
26	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	26th in the world
28	University of Southern California	28th in the world
29	University of California, San Diego	29th in the world
30	University of Texas at Austin	30th in the world
=32	New York University	32nd in the world
=32	Georgia Institute of Technology	32nd in the world
=36	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	36th in the world
=36	University of Wisconsin-Madison	36th in the world
41	Ohio State University	41st in the world
=42	University of Washington	42nd in the world
=42	University of Maryland, College Park	42nd in the world
=42	Boston University	42nd in the world
46	Purdue University	46th in the world
=59	Pennsylvania State University	59th in the world
=59	University of Minnesota	59th in the world
69	University of Pittsburgh	69th in the world