Penn Named Best College in the Country

In the 2015 ranking released Monday by College Factual, the University of Pennsylvania topped the list of 1,394 colleges as the top school in the nation.

Get a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every Sunday morning — great with coffee!

Do you know what the best college in the United States is, per a website called College Factual? That’s right: Philadelphia’s own University of Pennsylvania. Number one! Better than Yale, Duke, Harvard, MIT, Brown, Stanford, Princeton, Dartmouth and Notre Dame, in that order. I bet it’s that “Let’s go Penn, exclamation point!” chant that put Penn over the top.

Bill Phelan, College Factual’s CEO, says his company’s ranking is better than others because it doesn’t rely on preconceived notions of the colleges. “These rankings are based on a pure and distinct focus on data,” Phelan told USA Today. “We don’t count previous reputations … providing a more unbiased view.”

Penn beat out 1,393 colleges for top honors. Per Phelan, Penn’s ranking shot past Harvard’s this year because its students have a very low rate on defaulting on their student loan debt. Per the data, only 2 percent of Penn graduates default. Penn’s students get a $10,896 starting career earnings boost, College Factual says.

West Philly’s Ivy League university also gets high marks for diversity, freshman retention rate and an “average” crime rating.

The No. 2-ranked Big 5 school is Villanova, which ranks 68th nationally and 9th in Pennsylvania. University of the Sciences is No. 187, Saint Joseph’s No. 201, Drexel No. 231, La Salle No. 326 and Temple No. 327 — sorry, Owls fans!

Rounding out the Philadelphia schools: Philadelphia U. is No. 429, U. Arts No. 549, Holy Family is No. 526, Moore is No. 756, Chestnut Hill is No. 1,032 and Peirce College (Motto: “It’s spelled incorrectly”) is No. 1,238.

Elsewhere in the region, Swarthmore is No. 38, Haverford is No. 69, Bryn Mawr is No. 83, University of Delaware is No. 97, Rowan is No. 317, Bryn Athyn is No. 368, and Immaculata is No. 708. Rutgers-Camden doesn’t have its own ranking, but Rutgers-New Brunswick is No. 107,

Previously: Hilariously, Penn Students Named Most Polite in Nation

Previously: Are Philly College Students Really America’s Most-Caffeinated?

Previously: College — The Backlash

Previously: The Easy Way to Cut Your Tuition in Half

[USA Today]