Brown dropped to 13th in the 2025 US News Best Colleges Rankings after ranking ninth the previous year. It was the only institution to drop out of this year’s top 10.
Graduation rates and research output are only two of the many variables that go into creating U.S. News & World Report’s annual national rankings. According to U.S. News, a school’s ranking is determined in large part by “how successful an institution is at enrolling and graduating students from different backgrounds with manageable debt and postgraduation success.”
According to the magazine, Brown is back in the same position as it was in 2023. The University was placed ninth by U.S. News last year, which is the highest position it has held on the yearly list since 1997. Brown is currently tied for 13th place with Columbia, only ahead of Dartmouth as the lowest-ranking Ivy League school. The two universities that fell the furthest from the top 20, Brown and Penn, both by four spots.
The top three universities are still the same as they were the previous year: Princeton is first, followed by MIT and Harvard. The Daily Pennsylvanian released a list of the top 10 schools that had been leaked earlier in the month, which was the first indication that Brown had dropped out of the top 10.
Last year, the newspaper made significant methodology adjustments, including adding the first-generation graduation rate to its ranking calculations before taking it away from its 2025 rankings. Apart from eliminating graduation rates for first-generation students, the approach stayed mostly the same.
Brown kept getting great marks in the other rankings published by the journal. The University maintained its top spot in the rankings from the previous year, coming in first for “writing in the disciplines” and third for undergraduate teaching programs.
Brown performs better in the U.S. News rankings than in college rankings from other publications, even though he dropped out of the Top 10.
Brown was ranked 36th by the Wall Street Journal, which evaluates how effectively universities prepare their students for financial success. Brown, who was ranked 67th last year, rose 31 places in the WSJ rating this year.
