MIT Tops U.S. News 2027 College Rankings as New Job-Outcome Metrics End Princeton's 15-Year Run

U.S. News & World Report released its 2027 Best Colleges rankings on Sept. 23, 2026, placing MIT first for the first time and ending Princeton's 15-year run atop the list dating to the 2012 edition. Princeton fell to No. 2, followed by Harvard and Yale. Caltech and Stanford tied at fifth, Penn took seventh, Duke eighth, and Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, and Chicago tied at ninth. Columbia and Dartmouth placed 12th; Carnegie Mellon and Cornell tied at 14th. The overhaul responds to rising tuition and return-on-investment concerns. The methodology now incorporates earnings by major, drawn from the Education Department's College Scorecard and based on actual salaries four years after graduation, replacing the prior debt metric — a shift favoring schools with strong computer science, engineering, and quantitative finance placement. Student outcomes now carry more than 50% of the weight, including graduation rates, freshman retention, Pell Grant recipient social mobility, and starting salaries. Carnegie Classification changes regrouped roughly 20% of schools. Among liberal arts colleges, Williams and Amherst led. UC Berkeley and UCLA tied as top public schools.