Duke rose one spot to No. 6 in the 2024-25 edition of the U.S. News and World Report's Best National University rankings, marking its highest position since 2006.
Duke shares its ranking with CalTech, John Hopkins University and Northwestern University. Princeton University remains at No. 1 for the 14th consecutive year, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University and Yale University — identical to the 2023-24 list.
The 40th annual rankings were released a day earlier than the announced Sept. 24 date. The Daily Pennsylvanian first published the new rankings Sept. 9 after reportedly receiving an exclusive “preliminary copy” of the top 10 schools from a U.S. News spokesperson. The University of Pennsylvania fell from No. 6 to No. 10, marking its lowest ranking since 1997.
The universities in the top 10 list remain the same, barring Brown University, which dropped four spots out of its first top-10 ranking since the 1998-99 edition from No. 9 to No. 13.
Also behind Duke are Cornell University and the University of Chicago tied at No. 11, Columbia University at No. 13 and Dartmouth College and the University of California, Los Angeles tied at No. 15. The schools listed in the top 20 remain unchanged from last year’s ranking.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill dropped five spots to No. 27, ranking fifth among the nation’s public universities. Wake Forest University rose one spot to No. 46, and North Carolina State University jumped two spots to No. 58.
The University rose two spots in the Study Abroad programs category to No. 11, just one year after it implemented a 50-student cap for each Duke-approved program and a lottery-based application system for the most popular programs. The change was met with backlash from students, who said they were forced to pick programs that didn’t meet their academic needs.
Duke also dropped from its previously held No. 1 spot to No. 2 in the undergraduate Nursing program category.
This year’s ranking methodology most notably removed first-generation student six-year graduation rates as a separate metric from the National Universities and HBCUs formulas. Instead, U.S. News now measures the graduation rates of Pell Grant recipients, a metric that was described as “more standardized for comparative use.”
In its Best National Universities ranking, U.S. News ranks public and private institutions that “offer a range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and doctoral programs, and emphasize faculty research or award professional practice doctorates.” The 2024-25 list ranked 436 national universities out of nearly 1,500 evaluated, marking a decrease from last year’s 439 schools.
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Abby Spiller is a Trinity junior and editor-in-chief of The Chronicle's 120th volume.