Ranking of the Top Private Colleges and Universities in the U.S. for 2021

IBL News | New York

Each fall, over 400,000 students join private colleges. It means that one in five students chooses a private, nonprofit higher education over the public option.

With this data in mind, AcademicInfluence.com released this month its rank of the 50 Best Private Colleges & Universities of 2021.

Criteria in this ranking included full accreditation, operation as a nonprofit organization, and a minimum student body of 1,000 students.

“These schools stand out due to their influential faculty and alumni, and for their many unmatched accomplishments in academics,” explained Dr. Jed Macosko, Academic Director of AcademicInfluence.com and professor of physics at Wake Forest University.

The following schools are featured in the ranking:

  • Amherst College
  • Bard College
  • Barnard College
  • Brandeis University
  • Brown University
  • Bryn Mawr College
  • California Institute of Technology
  • Carnegie Mellon University
  • Case Western Reserve University
  • The Catholic University of America
  • Claremont McKenna College
  • Columbia University
  • Cooper Union
  • Cornell University
  • Dartmouth College
  • Duke University
  • Emory University
  • Georgetown University
  • George Washington University
  • Hampshire College
  • Harvard University
  • Haverford College
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • Kenyon College
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Morehouse College
  • New School
  • New York University
  • Northwestern University
  • Oberlin College
  • Pomona College
  • Princeton University
  • Reed College
  • Rice University
  • Sarah Lawrence College
  • Stanford University
  • Swarthmore College
  • Tufts University
  • University of Chicago
  • University of Pennsylvania
  • University of Rochester
  • University of Southern California
  • Vanderbilt University
  • Vassar College
  • Washington University in St Louis
  • Wellesley College
  • Wesleyan University
  • Williams College
  • Yale University
  • Yeshiva University

The top 10 schools are:

  1. California Institute of Technology
  2. Harvard University
  3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  4. Stanford University
  5. University of Chicago
  6. Princeton University
  7. Columbia University
  8. Yale University
  9. Johns Hopkins University
  10. Duke University

Behind the ranking is Fort Worth, Texas-based Influence Networks, which was created in 2016 with funding assistance from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Detailed Ranking of Top Schools