Cal beat Stanford -- though not by much -- in a new set of rankings aiming to compete with those of U.S. News & World Report.

Since 2005, The Washington Monthly has issued rankings based on its measures of "how much a school is benefiting the country."

The Monthly's 2011 list scrambles U.S. News traditions, with Yale University at 39, Dartmouth College at 74 and Washington University in St. Louis at 112.

Stanford comes in fourth, after University of California's campuses at San Diego, Los Angeles and Berkeley.

In the U.S. News & World Report's 2012 rankings, Stanford places fifth along with Caltech, MIT, the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania.