UChicago, Northwestern fall to No. 9 in U.S. News 2027 rankings

Princeton University's 15-year hold on the top of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings ended this September with Chicago's two best-known universities sliding in the reshuffle. 

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the new No. 1 in the 2027 Best Colleges rankings, while Princeton, which had led every edition since 2012, fell to No. 2. Harvard is third and Yale fourth.

Closer to home, UChicago and Northwestern University fell from No. 6 and No. 7 respectively to a tie at No. 9. On the other hand, UIUC went the other way, rising from No. 36 to No. 34 among national universities and jumped from No. 12 to No. 8 on the list of top public schools.

U.S. News institutes new rankings formula

The shuffling is partly by design. U.S. News added a ranking factor called Earnings by Major, worth 5% of a school's score, which compares what graduates earn four years out against others who studied the same subject. It counts only students who received federal financial aid, which U.S. News says strips out some of the advantage that comes from family wealth and connections. The factor also replaces a measure of graduate debt whose federal data had gone stale.

Additionally, U.S. News reclassified about a fifth of the institutions it ranks, warning in advance that the changes would produce more year-to-year movement than the past two editions did. Student outcomes, including graduation rates, retention and earnings, now account for 52% of a school's score. Reputation surveys of academics count for 20%, faculty resources 11%, financial resources 8%, student test scores 5%, and faculty research 4%.

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What the numbers say about the Illinois schools

The overall rank is only part of each school's profile. UChicago scored 91 out of 100 overall and ranks No. 1 in the country in economics and No. 1 among the best colleges for veterans. It also ranks No. 142 on social mobility, which measures how well a school enrolls and graduates students from lower-income families.

Northwestern scored well in engineering specialties, including No. 3 in materials and No. 5 in industrial and manufacturing engineering, ranking No. 50 on social mobility.

UIUC scored 77 overall, with No. 5 in computer science, No. 6 in undergraduate engineering, No. 1 in accounting and No. 2 in software engineering. It ranks No. 123 on social mobility.

What experts say

Higher education researchers have spent years warning families not to read much into a few spots up or down.

"When I see a set of college rankings, I don't even look at the position of individual colleges," Robert Kelchen, a professor and head of the department of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, wrote in 2023. He said he reads the methodology instead to see what the people behind a ranking have decided to reward.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, put it more sharply after U.S. News overhauled its formula in 2023 and schools moved by dozens of spots. In a statement, he called it ludicrous that a school could rise or fall that far in a single year, and said rankings have never been reliable indicators of quality.

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U.S. News on its rankings website argues the opposite: that its data helps families compare schools they would otherwise judge on reputation alone, and that new measures like graduate earnings answer what families keep asking, which is whether a degree is worth the price.

What it means for students

For a Chicago senior weighing applications this fall, one could say little has changed. UChicago and Northwestern remain among the 10 highest-ranked research universities in the country by this measure, and the gap between No. 6 and No. 9 reflects a changed formula as much as anything either campus has done.

As for UIUC, a jump to No. 8 among public universities paired with top-10 programs in computer science, engineering, and accounting puts an in-state option in the same conversation as schools charging far more.