News & Notes: Princeton ties for top school in nation in U.S. News college ranking

Princeton has earned the No. 1 spot in this year’s U.S. News & World Report ranking of the nation’s top universities for the second year in a row, the magazine announced Wednesday. Princeton again tied for top honors with Harvard.

The U.S. News list is generally considered one of the most highly regarded college rankings released each year. Last month, Forbes Magazine also ranked Princeton as the country’s top school, replacing Williams College in the No. 1 slot.

Three other Ivy League schools — Yale, Columbia and Penn — were ranked in the top 10, as were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology.

The ranking judges schools based on seven categories, some of which are quantitative and others that are more qualitative: the reputation of the undergraduate program, the institution’s selectivity, qualifications and the compensation of the faculty, graduation and retention rates, the amount of financial resources given to each student, the average giving rate of alumni and graduation rate performance.