U.S. News Best Colleges: New Hampshire Schools Make Lists

U.S. News & World Report is out with the latest edition of its best colleges list. The rankings released Monday reveal the top colleges in the country for 2019, including the best public schools, the best value schools and the top regional colleges and universities.

These lists are always always kind to a certain few New Hampshire schools, and this one is no exception. On the publication's best national universities list, Dartmouth was 12th and UNH was 106th.

Four schools made the regional universities (North) list: Colby-Sawyer at No. 7, Keene St. at No. 81, Southern N.H. at No. 112, and Plymouth St. at No. 132.

New Hampshire even made the liberal arts list, with St. Anselm coming in at 95.

You can see the lists of all those categories below, and the rest of the lists here.

National Universities

12. Dartmouth

106. UNH

National Liberal Arts

95. St. Anselm

Regional Universities North

7. Colby-Sawyer

81. Keene St.

112. Southern N.H.

132. Plymouth St.

“A university is not successful if it does not graduate its students, which is why the Best Colleges rankings place the greatest value on outcomes, including graduation and retention rates,” Robert Morse, chief data strategist at U.S. News, said in a press release. “By including social mobility indicators, U.S. News is further recognizing colleges that serve all of their students, regardless of economic status.”

U.S. News explains that its rankings are calculated based on 16 measures of academic quality. The publication groups schools by their academic missions into 10 categories that are then used to determine 10 distinct rankings. The distinct rankings include best national universities, best public schools and so on. The publication also made some notable changes to its methodology, including adding social mobility indicators, eliminating acceptance rate as a factor and reducing the weight it gives to measures like SAT/ACT scores.(You can read more about the methodology here.)

Below are the top five schools in the following categories:

Best National Universities
Princeton University (1)
Harvard University (2)
Columbia University (3)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (3)
University of Chicago (3)
Yale University (3)

Best National Liberal Arts Colleges
Williams College (1)
Amherst College (2)
Swarthmore College (3)
Wellesley College (3)
Bowdoin College (5)
Carleton College (5)
Middlebury College (5)
Pomona College (5)

Top Public Schools
University of California-Los Angeles (1)
University of California-Berkeley (2)
University of Virginia (3)
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (4)
University of California-Santa Barbara (5)
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (5)

Top Public National Liberal Arts Colleges
United States Military Academy (1)
United States Naval Academy (2)
United States Air Force Academy (3)
Virginia Military Institute (4)
New College of Florida (5)

Best Value Schools (National Universities)
Princeton University (1)
Harvard University (2)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (3)
Yale University (4)
Stanford University (5)

Best Value Schools (National Liberal Arts Colleges)
Williams College (1)
Pomona College (2)
Amherst College (3)
Swarthmore College (4)
Principia College (5)

See the full rankings here.

Photo by Darren McCollester/Newsmakers