Princeton sits atop U.S. News rankings, tied with Harvard

Princeton sits atop U.S. News & World Report's list of America's best colleges and universities, sharing the top spot with Harvard in rankings released on Wednesday afternoon. Princeton has been ranked as the top college in America for nine of the past 10 years.

Yale is third on this year’s list, while Penn, Stanford, MIT and the California Institute of Technology all share the fourth spot. Columbia and the University of Chicago are tied for eighth place, while Duke University rounds out the top 10.

Princeton dropped to second place in last year’s rankings after eight consecutive years of at least sharing the top spot. Princeton was ranked behind Harvard, which held first place by itself for the first time in 12 years. In recent history, Princeton and Harvard have shared first place often, and Harvard dropped to second place in the 2006 list.

Williams is now alone atop U.S. News’ list of liberal arts colleges, with Amherst falling to second from a tie for first last year. Dartmouth took the top spot in a new list that ranks schools on “commitment to undergraduate teaching,” according to the AP. Princeton came in second on that list.

The 26th annual U.S. News rankings come less than a week after Forbes magazine released its second annual college rankings, in which Princeton took second place behind the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Princeton took first place in Forbes magazine’s inaugural rankings.

Both U.S. News and Forbes consider graduation rates in formulating their rankings. U.S. News also considers criteria such as class size, average SAT scores and alumni giving rates. Forbes magazine accounts for, among other factors, how many alumni are listed in the 2008 “Who’s Who in America” register, results from ratemyprofessors.com and national award rates for students and faculty.

Colleges across the country, including Princeton, have often criticized the U.S. News survey, charging that no such ranking can do justice to a school's individual characteristics. And several schools have gone so far as to refuse to participate in the survey in previous years. Princeton was not among them.

Click here to see a complete list of the top 50.