Survey ranks Harvard, Princeton Universities as No.1 in US
21 Aug 2009
Washington: Harvard and Princeton Universities keep each other company atop the US News & World Report ranking of America's Best Colleges released Thursday. Williams College and Amherst College ranked 1-2 among liberal arts colleges in the news magazine's annual ranking.
Amongst other things, what has helped Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to share top spot has been its revised financial aid awards to help US and international students offset the school's $52,000-a-year costs.
Others figuring in the Top 10 rankings in the national universities category were Yale at No. 3; California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania, tied at No. 4; Columbia University and University of Chicago, tied at No. 8 and Duke University at No. 10.
The US News & World Report annual rankings measure 15 indicators of academic performance for each college and university. These include graduation and retention rates, financial resources and alumni giving, as well as a peer assessment survey through which top officials of various colleges rate others in their category.