USC rose one spot in this year’s U.S. News Best Colleges Rankings, tying with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the publication’s 27th “Best National University.”
The rankings, released on September 24, were based on 17 indicators. Factors related to a university’s effectiveness at enrolling and graduating students from different backgrounds with manageable debt and post-graduation success determined over 50% of the total score. This year’s most-heavily-weighted individual factors were graduation rate (16%), graduation rate performance (10%), peer assessment (20%) and financial resources per student (8%).
Last year, USC tied with UC Davis, UC San Diego, and the University of Florida with a score of 83 out of 100. This year, the university received a score of 85.
USC fell behind Emory, Georgetown and the University of Virginia, which tied for 24th. UC San Diego follows USC at No. 29.
Fellow California universities Stanford (No. 4), CalTech (No. 6), UCLA (No. 15) and UC Berkeley (No. 17) all ranked among the top 20.
While U.S. News and World Report has not published specific reasoning for USC’s rise in this year’s rankings, an article published Monday morning suggests that only “slight” changes in the methodology resulted in many universities maintaining similar positions in comparison to the 2023 edition.
This year, the graduation performance and rates for Pell Grant recipients at national universities both increased in weight from 3% to 5.5%, among other minor changes. Two factors introduced last year — first-generation graduation rates and first-generation graduation rate performance — were removed from this year’s calculations for national universities.
This year’s top five Best National Universities are Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Stanford and Yale. The complete rankings can be found at USNews.com.