Best NYC Colleges For 2018: U.S. News & World Report

NEW YORK CITY — The new school year is in full swing, and as high school seniors plan the next big step in their lives, their attention is no doubt on what colleges best suit their educational and career ambitions. College rankings certainly play into that decision making as well, and for 2018, U.S. News & World Report has ranked Columbia University in Morningside Heights as the city's best university.

The ivy league institution was named the fifth best national university in the country for 2018, leading an impressive crop of New York City schools. Seven other city schools made the U.S. News & World Report's rankings for national universities — which offer a full range of majors, graduate programs and specialize in research — and national liberal arts colleges — which emphasize undergraduate education and liberal arts fields.

Second to Columbia in national university rankings was New York University, which was named the 30th best in the nation. The rest of the rankings were as follows: Yeshiva University (94), The New School (133), St. John's (165) and Pace University (187).

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Barnard College was the only national liberal arts college in New York City to be ranked, and it impressed at 26th best in the country.

City University of New York schools did not make any of the national rankings, but made a strong showing in regional rankings. Baruch College was ranked the 20th best regional university in the north and was followed by Hunter College (28), Queens College (41), City College (56), Brooklyn College (86), the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (111) and Lehman College (137).

Princeton University in New Jersey as the best national university for the seventh year in a row.

Princeton is trailed by Harvard University, which comes in at second place, and the University of Chicago is the third best national university, according to U.S. News. For the 15th consecutive year, Williams College in Massachusetts ranked as the best national liberal arts college, followed in second place by another Massachusetts school, Amherst College.

Public schools — namely the California schools and U.S. military academies — made a strong showing in the 2018 rankings. The University of California in Los Angeles tied with the University of California in Berkeley for number one public school among national universities, and the United States Military Academy at West Point ranked as the top public school among national liberal arts colleges.

You can view the complete rankings on the U.S. News And World Report website.

In its rankings, U.S. News also took a look at student debt, and it turns out that 70 percent of students who graduate from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., graduate with debt — the average amount of debt being $46,779 — the highest among national universities. For national liberal arts colleges, that number is highest among graduates of St. John’s University in Minnesota, where 66 percent of students graduate with debt with an average amount of debt of $40,272. Students from Princeton, it turns out, graduate with the least amount of debt among national universities, as do students of Berea College in Kentucky when it comes to national liberal arts colleges.

U.S. News relies on various factors in determining the rankings, with retention, graduate rate performance and graduation rate accounting for 30 percent of the rankings.

“Graduation rate performance measures how well schools are graduating their students based on our predictions, which consider spending, test scores and the proportion of students receiving Pell Grants,” U.S. News explains.

Faculty resources account for 20 percent of the rankings — things like class size, student-to-faculty ratio — and financial resources — average spending on things that go directly toward educating undergraduates — accounts for 10 percent of the rankings. The rest of the rankings are based on expert opinion, student excellence and alumni giving.

U.S. News notes that the top national and top national liberal arts universities have significantly higher graduation and freshman retention rates than other schools. That’s a six-year graduation rate of 96 percent for the top 10 national universities and 92.5 percent for top 10 national liberal arts colleges, whereas that same figure for all numerically ranked national universities is 71.7 percent and 75.7 percent for national liberal arts colleges. Similarly, the freshman retention rate for top 10 national universities is 98.3 percent and 96.5 percent for top 10 national liberal arts colleges, compared to 87.2 percent for all numerically ranked national universities and 85.7 percent for all numerically ranked national liberal arts colleges, respectfully.

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