Campus & community, Campus news

Berkeley is top public university in new US World rankings

By Public Affairs

For the 16th year in a row, UC Berkeley is Number 1 in the latest US News and World Report rankings of public national universities.

UCLA and Virginia were second among public universities in the 2014 Guide to America’s Best Colleges, which was released today (Tuesday, Sept. 10). The University of Michigan followed closely behind. Four of the top 10 public universities are University of California campuses, and seven UC campuses made the top 50. (UCSF and UC Merced were not included in the category.)

Among all universities, Berkeley improved one position to 20th overall, tied with Emory and Georgetown. Princeton was top ranked, followed by Harvard (2nd), Yale (3rd), Columbia (4th) and Chicago and Stanford (tied at 5th). Seventh place was shared by Duke, MIT and Pennsylvania.

U.S. News lists Berkeley as 2nd only to UCLA in percentage of undergraduates receiving Pell grants, and among the top universities in strong commitment to teaching, least amount of student debt upon graduation and a top choice among high school guidance counselors, metrics that are not incorporated into their rankings of undergraduate education.

Among undergraduate programs ranked by peer academics, Berkeley placed moved up from third to second for business (tied with MIT) and placed third in engineering, the same as last year.

In concert with their national rankings, U.S. News will also post the global rankings by European-based QS, where Berkeley place 25th in the world this year using six indicators.

A full briefing (PDF) on the new rankings is posted on the UC Berkeley Office of Planning and Analysis website .