Context

This dataset contains the US News rankings of the best American universities of undergraduate programs. This is how US News ranks the colleges: "We calculated 10 distinct overall rankings where colleges and universities were grouped by their academic missions. For each ranking, the sum of weighted, normalized values across 17 indicators of academic quality determine each school's overall score and, by extension, its overall rank. The top performer(s) in each ranking displays an overall score of 100. Others' overall scores are on a 0-99 scale reflecting the distance from their ranking's top-performing school(s). Those placing outside the top 75% display their ranking's bottom quartile range (e.g., No. 90-120) instead of their individual ranks (e.g., No. 102)."

Content

This dataset contains the rankings of 392 American universities based on their undergraduate programs. It also contains the tuitions and enrollment numbers of each university. 2 colleges don't have tuition data, so it is labelled -1.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge US News for providing these rankings.

Inspiration

As a high schooler applying to undergraduate programs in America, it would be useful to know which colleges are best, and to compare tuitions and enrollment numbers.

The rankings include the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System’s ID numbers, making it possible to easily merge them with any of IPEDS’ datasets.

Since 1983, the magazine U.S. News and World Report has been ranking US universities and colleges. While I do not in anyway endorse the specific methodology used to construct these rankings, I know that many academic institutions and scholars use these rankings in their research and institutional assessment. I was in turn frustrated that historical rankings were not easily available anywhere online. The spreadsheets above contain all of the rankings from 1985-present for liberal arts colleges and from 1984-present for universities.

The data for liberal arts colleges were compiled from the actual articles releasing the data each year (any errors in entry are my own). I have included tiers for many years for the liberal arts college rankings, but most were only available online and not in print editions. The second tab lists the information that is still missing. If anyone has any of that information please contact me, I would like to fill in all of the gaps.

The data for universities is incomplete, with some years containing only the top 50 universities and others 150. They were compiled with the help of Akil Bello and Arjun Khandelwal from existing online sources. The second tab of each spreadsheet includes specific notes on the rankings for each year and sources. If anyone has any of the missing data, please contact me, I would like to fill in all of the gaps. Thanks to Melissa Whately for help with the IPEDS numbers.

Andrew G. Reiter, “U.S. News & World Report Historical Liberal Arts College and University Rankings,” available at: http://andyreiter.com/datasets/

Explore the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2026 below. Trusted worldwide by students, academics, governments and industry experts, the list of the best universities in the world includes 2,191 institutions from 115 countries and territories.

Dataset

This dataset was created by SYC

Released under MIT

Contents

DESCRIPTION US News Universities Rankings 2017 edition SUMMARY National Universities Rankings In-the-News From 9/13/16 press release:

U.S. News & World Report today announced the 2017 Best Colleges rankings to help students worldwide compare the academic quality of more than 1,800 U.S.-based schools. Princeton University remains No. 1 in the Best National Universities category. For the 14th consecutive year, Williams College takes the top spot on the Best National Liberal Arts Colleges list.

Source: U.S. News Best College Rankings

Schools in the National Universities category, such as Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and doctoral programs. These colleges also are committed to producing groundbreaking research.

About the data Name - institution name

Location - City, State where located

Rank Read methodology here. This dataset does not include unranked schools or any data that requires purchase / special access (i.e., exclusive to the U.S. News College Compass product).

Description Snippet of text overview from U.S. News

Tuition and fees Combined tuition and fees. For public universities with different tuition structure for in-state vs. out-of-state students, this number reflects out-of-state tutition.

In-stateFor public universities with different tuition structure for in-state vs. out-of-state students, this number reflects in-state tuition.

Undergrad Enrollment Number of enrolled undergratuate students

Read the Best Colleges Methodology

More from press release (quoted verbatim):

The average six-year graduation rate is 95 percent for the top 10 National Universities and 93.9 percent for the top 10 National Liberal Arts Colleges. The average freshman retention rate is 98.1 percent for the top 10 National Universities and 96.6 percent for the top 10 National Liberal Arts Colleges. For comparison, the average six-year graduation rate among all numerically ranked schools on the National Universities list is 71.3 percent, and the average freshman retention rate is 86.9 percent. For comparison, the average six-year graduation rate among all numerically ranked schools on the National Liberal Arts Colleges list is 75.2 percent, and the average freshman retention rate is 85.6 percent.

The top-ranked university in the United States in 2024 according to Forbes was Princeton University in New Jersey. Students at Princeton graduate with an average debt of 7,559 U.S. dollars, but have a median 10-year salary of 189,400 U.S. dollars. The Forbes rankings are based on several categories, including alumni salary, student debt, graduation rate, return on investment, retention rate, and academic success.

National Universities Rankings

Analyze 1,800 U.S. Universities and their Academic Performance

By Education [source]

About this dataset

Welcome to the U.S. News & World Report's 2017 National Universities Rankings, a comprehensive dataset of over 1,800 schools across the United States providing quality data on admissions criteria, cost of tuition and fees, enrollment numbers, and overall rankings! Here you'll find up-to-date information on institutes of higher learning from Princeton University at the top spot in Best National Universities to Williams College at No. 1 on the Best National Liberal Arts Colleges list.

This collection of data is all that's needed for potential students - parents, counselors and more - to evaluate their choices in selecting a college or university that perfectly meets their needs. For instance: what is the total tuition & fees cost? What are student enrollment numbers? How have students rated this school? Which universities have been recognized as top institutions in academics by U.S. News & World Report? What admissions criteria do these schools evaluate when considering an applicant's profile? The answers lie within this dataset!

Explore each category separately as well as with other considerations through visuals like our scatter plot to get an inside look into collegiate education from enrollment patterns charted against yearly expenses including room & board charges without forgetting several crucial factors such as six-year graduation rates and freshman retention rates measured among nations' universities included here -allowing for comparison and assessment beforehand for a well-rounded experience such that you can find your own path ahead!

More Datasets

For more datasets, click here.

Featured Notebooks

• 🚨 Your notebook can be here! 🚨!

How to use the dataset

This dataset contains information on the quality, tuition, and enrollment data of 1,800 U.S.-based universities ranked by U.S. News & World Report from 2017. It includes rankings from the National University and Liberal Arts College lists in addition to relevant data points like tuition fees and undergraduate enrollments for each school.

Users can take advantage of this dataset to build models that predict ranking or predicting cost-benefit results for students by using cost-related (tuition) metrics along with quality metrics (rankings). Alternatively users can use it to analyze trends between investments in higher education versus outcomes (ranking), or explore the relationship between enrollments for schools of varying rank tiers, etc...

For more information on how rankings are calculated please refer to this methodology explainer on U.S news website

Here is an overview of all columns included in this dataset:

Columns:Name - institution name,Location - City and state where located,Rank - Ranking according to U.S News & World Report ,Description - Snippet of text overview from U.S News ,Tuition and fees – Combined tuition and fees for out–of–state students ,In–state – Tuition and fees for in–state students ,Undergraduate Enrollment – Number of enrolled undergraduate students .

Using this column detail as a guide we can answer questions like ‘which colleges give highest ROI ?’ or ‘Which college has highest number undergraduates?’ . For statistical analysis such as correlation we may use a visual representation such as a scatter plots or bar graphs accordingly making it easier analyses trends found within our dataset ans well as exploring any relationships between different factors such us tuitions vs ranks

Research Ideas

• Developing a searchable database to help high school students identify colleges that match their criteria in terms of tuition, graduation rate, location, and rank.
• Identifying correlations between enrollment numbers and university rank in order to better understand how the number of enrolled students effects the overall ranking of a university.
• Comparing universities with similar rankings in order to highlight differences between programs’ tuition and fees as well as retention rates

Acknowledgements

If you use this dataset in your research, please credit the original authors. Data Source

License

License: Dataset copyright by authors - You are free to: - Share - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially. - Adapt - remix, ...

Explore the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025 below. Trusted worldwide by students, teachers, governments and industry experts, the list ranks 2,092 institutions from 115 countries and territories.

Comprehensive database of university rankings from QS, THE, US News, and ARWU covering 4,000+ universities worldwide

Data on the top universities for Computer Science in 2025.

Data on the top universities for Engineering in 2025, including disciplines such as Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Discover the booming global university evaluation service market. This comprehensive analysis reveals key trends, market size ($250M estimated for 2025), CAGR, leading players (QS, THE, US News), and future growth projections to 2033. Learn about the opportunities and challenges facing this dynamic sector.

Data on the top universities for Business and Economics in 2025, including disciplines such as Accounting and Finance, Business Management, and Economics.

Data on the top universities for Medical and Health in 2025, including disciplines such as Medicine and Dentistry, and Other Health Subjects.

Yearly citation counts for the publication titled "The Power of Information: How Do U.S. News Rankings Affect the Financial Resources of Public Colleges?".

Between April and October 2018, the Internet domains of 50 elite research universities in the US were scraped using the Scrapy framework for automated crawling and extraction of data from websites. The list of universities scraped was taken from the top 50 entries in the US News University Ranking Charts of 2017. The scraping process started at the base URL of each University domain and proceeded to extract textual elements contained in a URL endpoint and to follow all the detected links pointing within the University domain to continue collecting textual elements up to a predefined depth level. A depth first crawling algorithm for visiting scraped links was followed for memory efficiency reasons. In total, a text corpus of size 43 GB for the 50 universities combined was retrieved.

Dataset

This dataset was created by SYC

Released under MIT

Contents

Quality of life is a measure of comfort, health, and happiness by a person or a group of people. Quality of life is determined by both material factors, such as income and housing, and broader considerations like health, education, and freedom. Each year, US & World News releases its “Best States to Live in” report, which ranks states on the quality of life each state provides its residents. In order to determine rankings, U.S. News & World Report considers a wide range of factors, including healthcare, education, economy, infrastructure, opportunity, fiscal stability, crime and corrections, and the natural environment. More information on these categories and what is measured in each can be found below:

Healthcare includes access, quality, and affordability of healthcare, as well as health measurements, such as obesity rates and rates of smoking. Education measures how well public schools perform in terms of testing and graduation rates, as well as tuition costs associated with higher education and college debt load. Economy looks at GDP growth, migration to the state, and new business. Infrastructure includes transportation availability, road quality, communications, and internet access. Opportunity includes poverty rates, cost of living, housing costs and gender and racial equality. Fiscal Stability considers the health of the government's finances, including how well the state balances its budget. Crime and Corrections ranks a state’s public safety and measures prison systems and their populations. Natural Environment looks at the quality of air and water and exposure to pollution.

Data on the top universities for Physical Sciences in 2025, including disciplines such as Chemistry, Geology, and Physics & Astronomy.