Indicator 88
U.S. News and World Report's America's Top National Universities, 2001 to 2010
| Ranking Among National Universities | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | |
| Berkeley | 20 | 20 | 20 | 21 | 21 | 20 | 21 | 21 | 21 | 21 |
| Davis | 41 | 41 | 43 | 43 | 42 | 48 | 47 | 42 | 44 | 42 |
| Irvine | 41 | 41 | 45 | 45 | 43 | 40 | 44 | 44 | 44 | 46 |
| Los Angeles | 25 | 26 | 25 | 26 | 25 | 25 | 26 | 25 | 25 | 24 |
| Riverside | 73 | 82 | 85 | 84 | 81 | 85 | 88 | 96 | 89 | 96 |
| San Diego | 31 | 31 | 31 | 32 | 35 | 32 | 38 | 38 | 35 | 35 |
| Santa Barbara | 45 | 48 | 47 | 45 | 45 | 45 | 47 | 44 | 44 | 42 |
| Santa Cruz | 64 | 67 | 76 | 67 | 74 | 68 | 76 | 79 | 96 | 71 |
| U of Illinois | 41 | 36 | 38 | 40 | 37 | 42 | 41 | 38 | 40 | 39 |
| U of Michigan | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 22 | 25 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| SUNY at Buffalo | 3rd tier | 3rd tier | 3rd tier | 3rd tier | 3rd tier | 3rd tier | 3rd tier | 3rd tier | 121 | 121 |
| U of Virginia | 20 | 24 | 23 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 23 | 23 | 24 |
| Harvard | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| MIT | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 4 |
| Stanford | 6 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Yale | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
U.S. News and World Report's college rankings are the oldest and most well-known of all college rankings. The rankings are based on seven major variables: peer assessment, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, graduation rate performance and alumni-giving rate.
USNWR's rankings tend to favor elite private institutions over public universities. Privates tend to score higher than publics on four of USNWR's indicators: graduation rates, faculty resources, financial resources and alumni-giving rates, which together count for 55 percent of a school's total score.
The next indicator shows USNWR's rankings for all public national universities with private universities excluded.
Source: U.S. News and World Report. Additional information can be found at: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges
UC Merced is not yet included in these rankings.
USNWR labels its rankings for the prospective year; the 2010 rankings were published August 2009. Also, up through its 2008 rankings, USNWR only ranked institutions in its first and second tier (generally those ranked 100 or higher). Beginning in 2009, it published rankings for third-tier schools as well. San Francisco is not ranked because it is a graduate health sciences campus and Merced, which opened in 2005, is not ranked because it has interim accreditation.
You may view or download a table of the raw data used to generate these charts in CSV files, which can be opened in spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.