Department-level rankings from measured data, not reputation surveys: faculty quality (mean h-index across the full roster, not-yet-indexed professors counted conservatively) and power (quality × department size) from every indexed professor’s publication record, blended with graduate earnings (College Scorecard median pay for this major at this college), program scale (bachelor’s degrees conferred, IPEDS), research investment (NSF-tracked R&D dollars in the field) and curriculum depth (unique courses you can take). Scores are percentiles within each field, so physics norms — or CS salaries — are never compared with philosophy’s. Coverage today: 179/192 colleges, 13 fields, 26 majors (as of 2026-07-06 — enrichment ongoing; rankings refine as every professor lands).
| # | College | Score | Mean h | Faculty | Stars | Grad pay | Top professors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 1–4 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 36.2 | 53 (40 enriched) | 14 | $154k | Anantha Chandrakasan (h 116) · Hari Balakrishnan (h 107) · Regina Barzilay (h 92) | |
| 2 1–6 | Carnegie Mellon University | 33.1 | 40 (37 enriched) | 5 | $171k | Christos Faloutsos (h 132) · Phillip Gibbons (h 83) · Gregory Ganger (h 71) | |
| 3 1–5 | Stanford University | 39.9 | 35 (31 enriched) | 10 | $139k | Leonidas Guibas (h 120) · Ron Dror (h 94) · William Dally (h 93) | |
| 4 2–5 | University of California, Berkeley | 41.2 | 41 (33 enriched) | 13 | $119k | Trevor Darrell (h 139) · Pieter Abbeel (h 124) · David E. Culler (h 120) | |
| 5 5–10 | University of Southern California | 35.8 | 88 (79 enriched) | 19 | $137k | Bhaskar Krishnamachari (h 115) · Ramesh Govindan (h 89) · C.-C. Jay Kuo (h 89) | |
| 6 4–15 | University of Michigan | 32.0 | 54 (47 enriched) | 6 | $114k | Mark W Newman (h 103) · Ke Wu (h 99) · Kang G. Shin (h 94) | |
| 7 6–13 | Harvard University | 33.7 | 83 (70 enriched) | 16 | $152k | L Mahadevan (h 104) · Robert J. Wood (h 97) · Conor Walsh (h 77) | |
| 8 4–15 | Princeton University | 29.5 | 60 (51 enriched) | 5 | $147k | Tom Griffiths (h 100) · Sanjeev Arora (h 80) · Thomas Funkhouser (h 78) | |
| 9 6–12 | Columbia University | 39.2 | 71 (60 enriched) | 17 | $119k | Brian A Smith (h 121) · Shree K Nayar (h 95) · Shih-Fu Chang (h 94) | |
| 10 5–15 | University of Pennsylvania | 31.8 | 60 (48 enriched) | 9 | $135k | Christos Davatzikos (h 122) · Hamed Hassani (h 98) · Rajeev Alur (h 82) | |
| 11 8–16 | Cornell University | 33.4 | 60 (56 enriched) | 8 | $128k | Jon Kleinberg (h 115) · Joseph Halpern (h 78) · Bharath Hariharan (h 76) | |
| 12 5–18 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | 29.9 | 31 (27 enriched) | 3 | $119k | Tarek Abdelzaher (h 87) · Roy H. Campbell (h 66) · Sarita V. Adve (h 62) | |
| 13 10–17 | University of California, San Diego | 37.3 | 40 (39 enriched) | 6 | $112k | Mihir Bellare (h 100) · Steven Swanson (h 82) · Vineet Bafna (h 81) | |
| 14 8–18 | Georgia Institute of Technology | 28.2 | 52 (49 enriched) | 3 | $105k | Wenke Lee (h 80) · Ling Liu (h 70) · Mostafa Ammar (h 60) | |
| 15 6–21 | Duke University | 30.1 | 42 (37 enriched) | 6 | $133k | Siqi Liu (h 184) · Jian Pei (h 95) · Michael Reiter (h 78) | |
| 16 9–19 | University of Washington | 32.8 | 40 (36 enriched) | 7 | $101k | Matthew Golub (h 133) · Dieter Fox (h 94) · Michael Ernst (h 72) | |
| 17 14–26 | University of Chicago | 25.8 | 69 (48 enriched) | 7 | $118k | Ian Foster (h 125) · Michael Franklin (h 86) · Eliu Huerta (h 85) | |
| 18 13–26 | University of Texas at Austin | 23.6 | 40 (26 enriched) | 4 | $112k | Kristen Grauman (h 84) · Inderjit Dhillon (h 81) · Don Batory (h 62) | |
| 19 16–25 | Johns Hopkins University | 26.1 | 62 (42 enriched) | 7 | $110k | Steven Salzberg (h 161) · Adam Phillippy (h 94) · Gregory D. Hager (h 78) | |
| 20 17–28 | Stony Brook University (SUNY) | 20.6 | 63 (51 enriched) | 1 | $140k | Dimitris Samaras (h 60) · Steven Skiena (h 56) · Hong Qin (h 48) | |
| 21 16–29 | Rice University | 26.1 | 57 (45 enriched) | 7 | $131k | Ken Chen (h 103) · Moshe Y. Vardi (h 92) · Stephen Wong (h 73) | |
| 22 17–30 | California Institute of Technology | 27.6 | 20 (13 enriched) | 2 | $173k | Steven Low (h 89) · Erik Winfree (h 60) · Animashree Anandkumar (h 57) | |
| 23 20–28 | New York University | 35.0 | 40 (38 enriched) | 4 | $88k | Yann LeCun (h 119) · Rob Fergus (h 76) · Dennis Shasha (h 68) | |
| 24 19–30 | University of Wisconsin-Madison | 29.5 | 53 (44 enriched) | 7 | $81k | McDaniel, Patrick (h 73) · Livny, Miron (h 73) · Jha, Somesh (h 70) | |
| 25 19–30 | Brown University | 24.7 | 50 (42 enriched) | 3 | $151k | John F Hughes (h 93) · Roberto Tamassia (h 62) · Maurice P Herlihy (h 61) | |
| 26 21–31 | University of Maryland, College Park | 27.1 | 40 (31 enriched) | 2 | $100k | Heng Huang (h 74) · Hal Daumé III (h 61) · Calin Belta (h 56) | |
| 27 21–33 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 25.1 | 40 (31 enriched) | 3 | $90k | Anderson, James (h 66) · Fuchs, Henry (h 63) · Bansal, Mohit (h 61) | |
| 28 19–36 | Dartmouth College | 22.9 | 37 (35 enriched) | 3 | $133k | Andrew Thomas Campbell (h 81) · Yu-Wing Tai (h 66) · David Kotz (h 65) | |
| 29 23–33 | University of Notre Dame | 24.4 | 48 (45 enriched) | 3 | $97k | Kevin Bowyer (h 75) · Patrick Flynn (h 59) · Xiangliang Zhang (h 58) | |
| 30 22–37 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | 24.8 | 37 (33 enriched) | 4 | $95k | Ge Wang (h 86) · James Hendler (h 79) · Mohammed Zaki (h 67) | |
| 31 24–36 | Yale University | 26.7 | 34 (28 enriched) | 2 | $133k | Y. Richard Yang (h 79) · Vladimir Rokhlin (h 58) · Fan Zhang (h 57) | |
| 32 30–36 | University of California, Irvine | 31.9 | 84 (75 enriched) | 13 | $68k | Pierre F. Baldi (h 118) · Gene Y. Tsudik (h 81) · Xiaohui Xie (h 78) | |
| 33 28–38 | Boston University | 27.3 | 40 (34 enriched) | 4 | $90k | Ran Canetti (h 81) · Kate Saenko (h 75) · Stan Sclaroff (h 70) | |
| 34 29–39 | University of California, Santa Cruz | 29.1 | 40 (35 enriched) | 5 | $75k | James Edward Davis (h 91) · Martin Abadi (h 77) · Jose Joaquin Garcia-Luna-Aceves (h 68) | |
| 35 31–40 | Northwestern University | 20.7 | 49 (22 enriched) | 3 | $100k | Aggelos Katsaggelos (h 80) · Alok Choudhary (h 65) · Yan Chen (h 60) | |
| 36 30–40 | Washington University in St. Louis | 23.8 | 51 (40 enriched) | 5 | $110k | Ning Zhang (h 87) · Chenyang Lu (h 68) · Sanjoy Baruah (h 60) | |
| 37 30–43 | University of Minnesota, Twin Cities | 23.6 | 40 (33 enriched) | 3 | $83k | George Karypis (h 93) · Joseph Konstan (h 75) · Vipin Kumar (h 72) | |
| 38 34–43 | George Mason University | 20.4 | 40 (32 enriched) | 0 | $82k | Andrian Marcus (h 53) · Giuseppe Ateniese (h 48) · Jana Košecká (h 42) | |
| 39 32–48 | Arizona State University | 27.6 | 13 (11 enriched) | 2 | $76k | Douglas Montgomery (h 78) · Rong Pan (h 60) · George Runger (h 55) | |
| 40 36–46 | Tufts University | 20.7 | 40 (27 enriched) | 0 | $106k | Susan Landau (h 54) · Robert Jacob (h 54) · Matthias Scheutz (h 52) | |
| 41 39–50 | Worcester Polytechnic Institute | 18.3 | 44 (30 enriched) | 0 | $94k | Neil Heffernan (h 44) · Xiangnan Kong (h 39) · Yanhua Li (h 37) | |
| 42 39–52 | University of Illinois, Chicago | 21.1 | 40 (25 enriched) | 1 | $78k | Chen, Hao (h 141) · Bernstein, Daniel J. (h 56) · Cheng, Lu (h 51) | |
| 43 32–57 | University of California, Merced | 24.1 | 23 (19 enriched) | 1 | — | Ming-Hsuan Yang (h 144) · Dong Li (h 41) · Shawn Newsam (h 35) | |
| 44 38–56 | University of Missouri | 20.3 | 40 (29 enriched) | 1 | — | Jianlin Cheng (h 68) · Dominic K.C. Ho (h 56) · Kannappan Palaniappan (h 46) | |
| 45 41–56 | Lehigh University | 21.1 | 30 (25 enriched) | 0 | $86k | Lichao Sun (h 45) · Lifang He (h 45) · Brian D. Davison (h 43) | |
| 46 42–55 | Case Western Reserve University | 22.0 | 15 (14 enriched) | 0 | $96k | Mehmet Koyuturk (h 37) · Jing Li (h 36) · Vipin Chaudhary (h 34) | |
| 47 42–57 | New Jersey Institute of Technology | 24.2 | 40 (35 enriched) | 3 | $68k | Haotian Zhang (h 90) · Jing Li (h 70) · Zhi Wei (h 61) | |
| 48 43–56 | George Washington University | 20.8 | 26 (25 enriched) | 0 | $88k | Robert Pless (h 40) · David Broniatowski (h 35) · Timothy Wood (h 34) | |
| 49 41–55 | University of Maryland, Baltimore County | 17.4 | 67 (41 enriched) | 1 | $84k | Tulay Adali (h 64) · Curtis Menyuk (h 57) · Masoud Soroush (h 53) | |
| 50 39–58 | Pomona College | 18.0 | 13 (11 enriched) | 0 | $143k | Kim B. Bruce (h 36) · Yuqing Melanie Wu (h 30) · David R. Kauchak (h 19) | |
| 51 42–54 | North Carolina State University | 16.7 | 21 (18 enriched) | 0 | $86k | Tiffany Barnes (h 39) · Wu-show Chou (h 26) · Min Chi (h 25) | |
| 52 44–62 | Colorado School of Mines | 19.3 | 40 (31 enriched) | 1 | $86k | Hua Wang (h 83) · Pejman Tahmsebi (h 51) · C. Estelle Smith (h 40) | |
| 53 45–62 | University of Texas at Dallas | 19.6 | 24 (17 enriched) | 0 | $72k | Weili Lily Wu (h 53) · Yvo Desmedt (h 40) · W. Eric Wong (h 40) | |
| 54 45–60 | Drexel University | 16.1 | 40 (30 enriched) | 0 | $87k | Ali Shokoufandeh (h 38) · Yuanfang Cai (h 37) · Dario Salvucci (h 36) | |
| 55 49–64 | Brigham Young University | 17.8 | 39 (30 enriched) | 0 | $86k | Mike D. Jones (h 38) · Mike P. Jones (h 38) · David Wingate (h 38) | |
| 56 49–66 | Williams College | 18.1 | 14 (11 enriched) | 0 | $111k | Kelly Shaw (h 33) · Stephen N. Freund (h 28) · Jeannie Albrecht (h 19) | |
| 57 48–66 | Iowa State University | 19.2 | 40 (36 enriched) | 1 | $71k | Yang Li (h 65) · Qi Li (h 54) · Myra Cohen (h 38) | |
| 58 49–66 | Barnard College | 19.0 | 9 (6 enriched) | 0 | $107k | Rebecca Wright (h 35) · Smaranda Muresan (h 28) · Lucy Simko (h 11) | |
| 59 55–61 | Temple University | 16.0 | 8 (3 enriched, partial) | 0 | $105k | Konstantin Bauman (h 9) · Sezgin Ayabakan (h 8) · Tamer Aldwairi (h 4) | |
| 60 54–71 | Illinois Institute of Technology | 19.9 | 28 (20 enriched) | 0 | $74k | Peng-Jun Wan (h 50) · Yan Yan (h 41) · Xian-He Sun (h 36) | |
| 61 53–66 | Stevens Institute of Technology | 15.3 | 40 (25 enriched) | 0 | $99k | Michael Greenberg (h 50) · Kai Li (h 32) · Jina Huh-Yoo (h 29) | |
| 62 56–72 | Brandeis University | 19.2 | 24 (17 enriched) | 1 | $80k | James Pustejovsky (h 59) · Nianwen Bert Xue (h 39) · Pengyu Hong (h 32) | |
| 63 58–70 | Oregon State University | 17.5 | 13 (5 enriched, partial) | 0 | $75k | Julie A. Adams (h 34) · Houssam Abbas (h 18) · Tejasvi Anand (h 16) | |
| 64 62–69 | Rochester Institute of Technology | 13.7 | 51 (34 enriched) | 0 | $83k | Edith Hemaspaandra (h 29) · Richard Zanibbi (h 28) · Mohan Kumar (h 24) | |
| 65 59–73 | University of Connecticut | 19.2 | 40 (30 enriched) | 0 | $69k | Jinbo Bi (h 40) · Amir Herzberg (h 38) · Alexander Russell (h 38) | |
| 66 58–71 | Florida International University | 15.6 | 40 (32 enriched) | 0 | $63k | Michael Robinson (h 40) · Jason Liu (h 31) · Peter Clarke (h 30) | |
| 67 63–71 | Harvey Mudd College | 11.5 | 18 (16 enriched) | 0 | $132k | Chris Stone (h 32) · Ben Wiedermann (h 12) · Jonathan Chang (h 10) | |
| 68 54–79 | Connecticut College | 18.2 | 11 (6 enriched) | 1 | $86k | S. James Lee (h 61) · Gary Parker (h 12) · Ozgur Izmirli (h 10) | |
| 69 67–73 | University of Alabama | 19.7 | 5 (4 enriched) | 0 | $70k | Purushotham Bangalore (h 15) · Monica Anderson (h 14) · Travis Atkison (h 13) | |
| 70 62–75 | Carleton College | 16.1 | 14 (11 enriched) | 0 | $88k | Layla Oesper (h 34) · David Liben-Nowell (h 21) · Anna Rafferty (h 20) | |
| 71 58–76 | University at Albany (SUNY) | 16.3 | 26 (20 enriched) | 0 | $50k | Ming-Ching Chang (h 53) · Jeff Offutt (h 48) · Pradeep K. Atrey (h 28) | |
| 72 62–77 | Middlebury College | 16.3 | 14 (11 enriched) | 0 | $80k | Daniel Scharstein (h 30) · Michael Linderman (h 29) · Matthew Dickerson (h 25) | |
| 73 70–80 | Whitman College | 20.3 | 4 (4 enriched) | 0 | — | John Stratton (h 17) · Janet Davis (h 14) · William Bares (h 13) | |
| 74 55–86 | Bowdoin College | 18.4 | 11 (8 enriched) | 0 | — | David Byrd (h 57) · Jeffrey Knockel (h 17) · Sean K. Barker (h 15) | |
| 75 63–81 | Colby College | 15.7 | 11 (9 enriched) | 0 | — | Amanda Stent (h 29) · Ying Li (h 17) · Stephanie Taylor (h 13) | |
| 76 74–78 | Swarthmore College | 12.5 | 19 (13 enriched) | 0 | $104k | Lisa Meeden (h 17) · Kevin Webb (h 12) · Tia Newhall (h 11) | |
| 77 67–80 | Yeshiva University | 15.4 | 40 (8 enriched, partial) | 0 | — | Honggang Wang (h 55) · David Li (h 43) · Ming Ma (h 26) | |
| 78 74–80 | Macalester College | 13.1 | 43 (31 enriched) | 0 | $82k | Michael Schneider (h 35) · David Bressoud (h 33) · Daniel Kaplan (h 30) | |
| 79 68–84 | Colgate University | 17.1 | 14 (9 enriched) | 0 | $80k | Grusha Prasad (h 43) · Joel Sommers (h 30) · Aaron Gember-Jacobson (h 25) | |
| 80 68–86 | University of Richmond | 17.4 | 15 (11 enriched) | 0 | $77k | John R. Hubbard (h 57) · Joonsuk Park (h 38) · Patrick Martin (h 14) | |
| 81 77–82 | Grinnell College | 13.8 | 12 (9 enriched) | 0 | $84k | Henry M. Walker (h 17) · Jerod Weinman (h 15) · Charlie Curtsinger (h 10) | |
| 82 77–84 | Hamilton College | 17.3 | 9 (6 enriched) | 0 | — | Thomas Helmuth (h 20) · Darren Strash (h 15) · Mark Bailey (h 14) | |
| 83 81–84 | Chapman University | 13.4 | 43 (5 enriched, partial) | 0 | $67k | Dr. Daniel Alpay (h 39) · Dr. Rahul Soangra (h 15) · Rao Ali (h 5) | |
| 84 78–87 | Haverford College | 16.9 | 9 (7 enriched) | 0 | — | Sorelle Friedler (h 20) · David Wonnacott (h 20) · Rebecca Everett (h 12) | |
| 85 80–86 | Vassar College | 14.9 | 11 (10 enriched) | 0 | $80k | Jonathan Gordon (h 23) · Luke Hunsberger (h 14) · Jason Waterman (h 14) | |
| 86 84–88 | Colorado College | 16.4 | 8 (4 enriched) | 0 | — | Janet Burge (h 16) · Varsha Koushik (h 8) · Danielle Ellsworth (h 8) | |
| 87 85–88 | Rhodes College | 15.7 | 7 (5 enriched) | 0 | $60k | Hong Xu (h 16) · D. Brian Larkins (h 7) · Sean Kugele (h 7) | |
| 88 84–88 | Davidson College | 13.0 | 18 (13 enriched) | 0 | — | Yan Zhuang (h 28) · Tabitha Peck (h 20) · Laurie Heyer (h 15) |
Method: Six within-field percentile components: faculty quality (mean h-index over the FULL headcount, not-yet-enriched faculty imputed at the field p25 with a small shrinkage prior), faculty power (quality x headcount, log), graduate earnings (Scorecard median pay 1yr after a bachelor’s in this major HERE), program scale (IPEDS first-major bachelor degrees conferred, log), research investment (NSF HERD annual R&D expenditure in this field, log), and curriculum depth (unique course titles, log). Weights renormalize over the components a college has — privacy-suppressed earnings or a missing catalog changes the evidence mix, never the direction. Partial enrichment: unranked entries are pending data, not low-ranked; imputation vanishes as enrichment completes. Every rank carries a bootstrap-resampled 90% interval (shown under the rank) — wide intervals mean the position could move as more professors are indexed. Weights: faculty quality 30% / faculty power 15% / grad earnings 25% / program scale 10% / research investment 10% / curriculum 10%; imputation at field p25; minimum 3 enriched faculty to rank. Source: college directories + OpenAlex (data/faculty shards) + College Scorecard field-of-study earnings (data/college_major_outcomes.json). Generated 2026-07-06.
The top five colleges for computer science are Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Southern California (College Monte Carlo by-major rankings, based on faculty research strength, graduate earnings, and program scale). All 88 ranked computer science programs appear in the table on this page with bootstrap confidence intervals.
The top five colleges for engineering are University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, University of Michigan, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (College Monte Carlo by-major rankings, based on faculty research strength, graduate earnings, and program scale). All 84 ranked engineering programs appear in the table on this page with bootstrap confidence intervals.
The top five colleges for business are University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Emory University, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and Carnegie Mellon University (College Monte Carlo by-major rankings, based on faculty research strength, graduate earnings, and program scale). All 100 ranked business programs appear in the table on this page with bootstrap confidence intervals.
The top five colleges for biology are University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, University of California, San Diego, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Princeton University (College Monte Carlo by-major rankings, based on faculty research strength, graduate earnings, and program scale). All 123 ranked biology programs appear in the table on this page with bootstrap confidence intervals.
Each college's score blends six measured components, each a percentile within its field: faculty quality (mean h-index across the full roster, 30%), faculty power (quality times department size, 15%), graduate earnings (College Scorecard median pay one year after a bachelor's degree in this major, 25%), program scale (IPEDS bachelor's degrees conferred, 10%), research investment (NSF HERD R&D dollars in the field, 10%), and curriculum depth (unique course titles, 10%). Weights renormalize when a component is missing, and every rank carries a bootstrap 90% confidence interval. The full approach is documented on our methodology page, and every input dataset is listed on data sources.
US News ranks whole institutions and leans in part on peer reputation surveys; these rankings are department-level and use only measured data: every indexed professor's publication record (OpenAlex h-index), graduate earnings (College Scorecard), degrees conferred (IPEDS), and research spending (NSF HERD). Every rank also shows a bootstrap 90% interval, so you can see how firm each position is. Read the full methodology and the complete list of data sources.