News & Notes: U. takes top spot in U.S. News rankings

Princeton topped Harvard on the U.S. News & World Report's 2014ranking of America’s best colleges and universities, a year after the two tied for first place in the 2013 rankings. With Harvard now second on the list, the two universities have led the list for 11 years in a row.

Yale was ranked third, followed by Columbia. Stanford and the University of Chicago are tied for fifth, and Duke, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania take a three-way tie for seventh. Dartmouth and the California Institute of Technology rounded out the top 10. Ivy League schools all made the top 20, with Brown and Cornell ranking 14th and 16th, respectively.

U.S. News ranked schools on the basis of a range of factors that include class size,SAT scores, peer reputation, alumni giving rates and selectivity. For the 2014 rankings, the publication adjusted its methodology to reflect changes in the state of college admissions and the postgraduate environment.Students' high school class rank carried less weight, as fewer schools are including the mark on transcripts. Other changes in ranking factors included a reduction in the importance of the peer assessment score and an increase in weight of graduation and retention rates.

The ranking of the top three liberal arts colleges was unchanged, with Williams College in first, followed by Amherst and Swarthmore.