2021 Best Colleges in the United States

1,715 Colleges $75,304 Avg Salary* 86% Avg 4-Year Grad Rate*

It's not easy to decide which college to attend when you have so many options available. College Factual has developed its Top Colleges and Universities ranking as one item you can use to help make this decision.

After analyzing 1,715 schools in the United States, we came up with our list of those that offered the highest quality education. Our ranking methodology focuses on over 20 different objective factors - such as graduation rate, post graduate earnings, and a school's average expenditure per student - to make this determination.

Find out more about our ranking methodology.

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College Finder × Desired Degree Level - Select One - Associate Bachelor Master Doctorate Certificate / Diploma Desired Study Area - Select One - Criminal Justice & Legal Business & Commnunications Technology Fine Arts & Design Health, Nursing, Medicine Psychology & Counseling Education & Teaching Vocational Traning Zip Code High School/GED Grad Year Highest Level of Education Completed - Select One - Haven't completed High School High School/GED Associate Bachelor Master Doctorate

Customizing Your List

We've developed a number of other tools and rankings to help you make your college decision. Start by filtering this list by location or field of study and then explore our other rankings that feature schools great for different groups of students such as veterans or returnings adults.

You can create your own custom comparison that focuses on the factors most important to you using our tool, College Combat. We encourage you to try it out and pit your favorite colleges and universities head to head!

Top Colleges in the United States

Learn more about these excellent schools below:

#8 Pomona College Claremont, California 91% 4-Year Graduation Rate $58,100 Average Early-Career Earnings Pomona College did quite well in the 2021 Best Colleges in the United States ranking, coming in at #8. Pomona is a private not-for-profit institution located in Claremont, California. The school has a small population, and it awarded 449 bachelor’s degrees in 2018-2019. The school has an excellent freshman retention rate of 98%, which means students like the school well enough to return for a second year. The average salary of a graduate with a bachelor’s degree from Pomona is $58,100 during the early years of their career. Full Pomona College Report Request Information

Rest of the Best 50 Colleges in the United States

Not only did these schools make the top 50 list, but they also landed in the top 15% of this year’s ranking:

Rest of the Top 15% Colleges in the United States

To learn more about the schools below, just click on their names:

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Honorable Mentions

These schools also performed well in our Best Colleges ranking:

More Rankings >

Notes and References

Footnotes

*These averages are for the top 25 schools only.

References

The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of our data about colleges.

Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).

Information about the national average student loan default rate is from the U.S. Department of Education and refers to data about the 2016 borrower cohort tracking period for which the cohort default rate (CDR) was 10.1%.

More about our data sources and methodologies.