The 2026 Best Colleges in America: Stanford, Babson and Yale Take Top Spots

Stanford University tops the list of the best U.S. colleges in the latest WSJ/College Pulse rankings.

Unlike other school rankings, this list emphasizes one point: How well did the college prepare students for financial success? More than any other factor, it rewards the boost an institution provides to its graduates’ salaries, beyond an estimate of what they could have expected from attending any college.

---

---

Stanford returns to the top of this list for the first time since the 2017 rankings. Ivy League schools also figure prominently, with Yale University, Princeton University and Harvard University finishing third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Two other Ivy League schools—Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania—come in at eighth and ninth, respectively.

Beyond the marquee names, the rankings’ distinct methodology highlights some institutions that don’t have as much name recognition but still help their students achieve remarkable success.

Babson College—the small Wellesley, Mass., school focused on business and entrepreneurship—retained its No. 2 spot from last year. Claremont McKenna College, near Los Angeles, clocked in at No. 6, and Davidson College, near Charlotte, N.C., ranked 10th.

The University of California, Berkeley, is the best-ranked public school, at No. 7 overall, and five other public schools from the state cracked the top 25. 

A lot of things have remained constant from last year. Eighteen of the top 20 schools are the same, with a wide variety of colleges, including large public schools, small private schools, technology institutes and liberal-arts colleges in this upper tier.

In addition to graduates’ salaries, the rankings consider schools’ graduation rates and diversity—and their learning environment, based on a survey of about 120,000 students and recent alumni. The survey measured factors such as quality of teaching and feedback, career preparation and learning facilities, and how likely students were to recommend their school to a friend.

Schools that garnered top scores for learning environment included Babson, Washington and Lee University and Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, and Brigham Young University in Utah.

The value of Stanford

Stanford scored well across the rankings’ metrics, including a high graduate salary score and a short amount of time to pay off the net price of college.

Raj Palleti, a 2024 Stanford graduate, says his computer-science education at the school has opened doors. While at Stanford, he interned at Nvidia and co-founded an AI startup, alphaXiv, where he is the chief operating officer. The company’s community platform helps researchers accelerate work with AI tools.

Palleti credits Stanford for fueling students’ drive and talents for innovation. “They have so much of an emphasis of like, ‘Oh, you should just build cool things,’ ” he says.

Karuna Taesopapong, a Stanford economics major who graduated in 2024, recalls discussion-focused, hands-on courses. One involved an energy-market simulation, where students had to navigate supply shortages and power outages to maximize profits.

“That’s the reason why you go to Stanford, because you try to get those niche insights and hear about stories that you wouldn’t necessarily get anywhere else,” she says. She now is the growth leader at a startup called Onton, an AI-powered home-decor shopping engine.

Babson’s entrepreneurial emphasis

Many collegiate business programs require soon-to-be-graduates to pitch their own entrepreneurial idea as part of a capstone-style class. Babson College, which landed at the No. 2 spot overall in this year’s rankings, demands this of first-year students.

Hands-on learning begins right away at Babson, with a yearlong course called Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship where groups of students receive a loan of up to $3,000 to fund their own business. The class teaches accountability and resilience, as well as how to create value, says Babson’s president, Stephen Spinelli.

“That has a real impact on how they view all the other courses they take,” Spinelli says. “They’re going to be thinking about: How is this going to help me find opportunities and create business models so that value can come from this?”

Matthew Shadid, a junior, says one marketing class he took included a project where students had to create an event and persuade people to attend. His group ran a matcha stand. “Every class has something of this nature,” says Shadid, who is heading off to a partnership program with the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Real-world experiences at Babson can help graduates land higher-paying jobs, Spinelli says. “They show the skills that, ‘I can immediately do something important that’s going to affect your business,’ ” he says. 

Low cost, high potential

City University of New York schools dominate the list of colleges that offer the best value, ranking first through seventh in this category.

Baruch College in Manhattan won the top spot, keeping costs low while increasing graduates’ earning potential.

This ranking estimates how quickly graduates can pay off the costs of college based on the income boost they receive due to their degree. Last year’s best-value list included five CUNY schools in the top 10.

“We try very, very hard to keep that tuition price extremely affordable,” says CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez, noting the average CUNY tuition for New Yorkers is about $7,000 a year and that the system has kept rates steady for years.

CUNY focuses on career readiness, and has pushed to offer students more paid internships and apprenticeships by leveraging relationships with local employers, Matos Rodríguez says. One avenue for this effort is the New York Jobs CEO Council, a coalition of employers that have hired thousands of CUNY graduates in recent years, he says.

Roshan Fernandez is a Wall Street Journal reporter in New York. He can be reached at roshan.fernandez@wsj.com.