Forbes: America's Top Colleges 2022

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Forbes’ top colleges ranking spotlights schools that offer an excellent education at a great price, graduate high-earners and propel students to become successful entrepreneurs and influential leaders in their fields. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology—ranked number one for the first time this year—accomplishes all of this and more. California-based colleges led by UC Berkeley continue to excel, filling six of the top 25 spots, and private colleges such as Duke University, Rice University and Williams College have made laudable gains. Meanwhile, Ivy League institutions Harvard University and Yale University dropped several spots this year. See here for an explanation of our rankings methodology, here for a closer look at the Ivy League’s lower scores, and here for a piece about America’s federal military academies, which Forbes spun out of the top colleges list.

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1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MA

$53,162

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2. Stanford University

CA

$54,547

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2. University of California, Berkeley

CA

$18,831

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4. Princeton University

NJ

$55,465

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5. Columbia University

NY

$57,642

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We kept our methodology consistent with last year, which allows us to make direct comparisons to our previous list. These comparisons help us better understand why Harvard and some of its Ivy League peers dropped in our rankings. We also looked at what’s causing public universities to stand out and how some small private colleges have worked their way up the list.

Harvard doesn’t stack up to Forbes’ list leaders on a couple of measures. The first is retention rate. Several of the Ivy League universities saw steep declines in their retention rate during the fall 2020 semester—a term that began in the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic, when most classes were held online. Many returning undergraduates opted to take a leave of absence, and federal visa restrictions kept international students off campus.

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