Ranked: The Top 50 US Universities

 Ranked: The Top 100 US Universities main image

The university or college you choose to go to can have a major impact on the rest of your life, so it's probably a good idea to do some research first. To help with the process, we've compiled a ranking of the best 100 US universities and colleges, according to the recently released QS World University Rankings: USA 2020.

We've also broken down the complete list of top US universities by state, so you can find a leading study destination that's close to home (and probably more affordable than expensive out-of-state options).

Top 100 US universities

Rank

University

  1

Harvard University

  2

Stanford University

  3

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

  4

University of California, Berkeley (UCB)

  5

Columbia University

  6=

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

  6=

Yale University

  8

University of Pennsylvania

  9

Princeton University

  10

Cornell University

  11

New York University (NYU)

  12

University of Chicago

  13

Duke University

  14

Johns Hopkins University

  15

University of Southern California

  16

Northwestern University

  17

Carnegie Mellon University

  18

University of Michigan

  19

California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

  20

Brown University

  21=

Boston University

  21=

Rice University

  23

Georgetown University 

  24

University of Washington

  25

University of Texas at Austin

  26

University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

  27

Emory University

  28=

University of California, Davis (UCD)

  28=

Washington University in St. Louis

  30=

University of Rochester

  30=

Vanderbilt University

  32

Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)

  33

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  34

George Washington University

  35=

Tufts University

  35=

University of Florida

  37

Dartmouth College 

  38

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

  39

University of Miami

  40

University of Notre Dame

  41=

Rutgers University - New Brunswick

  41=

University of California, Irvine (UCI)

  43=

Case Western Reserve University

  43=

University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC)

  45

Stony Brook University, State University of New York

  46

University at Buffalo SUNY

  47

Pennsylvania State University

  48=

Boston College

  48=

University of Maryland, College Park

  50

University of Virginia