Two Chicago area schools landed in the top 10 on US News & World Report’s ranking of “Best Colleges” in the US for 2027, with several other Illinois universities also ranking high on the list.
The annual list was released by US News & World Report Tuesday. Several schools slipped or landed in different spots on the list this year after editors said their methodology changed significantly to “address growing public concerns regarding higher education affordability and long-term value.”
One of the biggest changes made, editors wrote, was introducing Earnings by Major as part of its metrics, which replaced the Graduate Indebtedness metric. Overall, schools were evaluated on up to 17 weighted measures of academic quality and success that focused heavily on student outcomes, including graduation and retention rate, social mobility and post-graduate earnings.
Those metrics were combined with other factors like peer assessments, according to a news release, to create individual scores.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology claimed the top spot on the list for 2027, bumping Princeton after a 15-year-streak at the top.
In Illinois, Northwestern University in Evanston the University of Chicago tied for ninth place on the list, marking a fall in the rankings for both. Last year, Northwestern landed in seventh place, and the University Chicago was in sixth.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign earned the No. 34 spot on the list, followed by the University of Illinois Chicago at 95, the Illinois Institute of Technology and Loyola University tied for the 121st spot.
Bradley University, in Peoria; and DePaul University, in Lincoln Park also tied on the list in the 169th spot.
Illinois State University, in Normal, made the list at No. 219.
The full list of Illinois colleges that made the cut can be found here. The full report from US News can be found here.
