Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings 2019

The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings give students and their families the information that they need to help them choose where to study. Uniquely, it has at its heart the voices of about 200,000 current college students, collected through Times Higher Education’s annual US Student Survey.

The ranking of almost 1,000 US colleges and universities is made up of 15 individual performance indicators designed to answer the questions that matter most to students and their families: How likely am I to graduate, pay off my loans and get a good job? Does the college have plenty of resources to teach me properly? Will I be engaged and stretched in the classroom and get good access to my teachers? Is there a diverse campus community?

View the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings 2019 methodology

This year, Harvard University tops the table for the second year in a row, while the Massachusetts Institute of Technology climbs one place to second, and Yale rises three places to third.

The University of California, Los Angeles is still the top public university, holding on to 25th place.

Meanwhile, Amherst College is the top liberal arts institution in the ranking at 22nd place, swapping places with Williams College, which is now at 23rd.

The entirely student-focused nature of the WSJ/THE College Rankings means that the results differ significantly from the THE World University Rankings, which have a heavier emphasis on research excellence on a global scale.

The calculation of the rankings for 2019 has been subject to independent audit by professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Note: all ranked institutions have an overall score and four pillar scores. However, for each pillar, only institutions ranked in the top 500 overall, and the top 500 in this pillar, have a publicly visible score.