How We Rank America’s Top Colleges

A behind-the-scenes look at our annual Top Colleges rankings.

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o put together Forbes 2022 Top Colleges list, we started with a list of U.S. colleges that educate undergraduates according to their Carnegie Classification—a higher education framework that categorizes institutions based on the types of degrees they offer, their research output and specialty focus. We chose doctoral research universities, master’s universities and colleges and baccalaureate colleges, as well as colleges that offered specialized programs in engineering, business and art.

From there, we looked at colleges that had sufficient data within the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and College Scorecard—two federal government databases. We also pulled in data from the Seattle-based software and data company PayScale, the Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank Third Way, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, as well as some of Forbes’s own lists. We excluded schools with fewer than 300 undergraduates and spun out the five federal military academies, which operate very differently from the other schools on our list.

We ranked the remaining colleges using the following measures.

Alumni Salary (20%)

We used earnings data from PayScale and College Scorecard to determine which colleges produced the highest-paid graduates. From PayScale, we looked at graduates’ median earnings 6 years and 10 years post graduation. From the College Scorecard, we pulled median earnings data for graduates 6 years and 10 years post enrollment.

Neither data source is perfect. PayScale relies on self-reported survey data, which can result in skewed information, and College Scorecard collects information only for federal student loan holders—not all graduates. To account for each sources’ shortcomings, we weighted each of the four income segments at 5%.

Debt (15%)

Two variables from College Scorecard help us measure the typical debt load for students at a given college. First, we multiplied the median federal loan debt per borrower by the percentage of students who take out federal student loans at the college. Second, we looked at each college’s five-year repayment rate—which is the percentage of graduates who paid at least $1 toward their federal loan principal within five years of entering repayment. Both of these variables were weighted at 7.5% for a total of 15%.

Graduation Rate (15%)

We evaluate the colleges on our list using their six-year graduation rate in order to account for the outcomes of transfer students, part-time students, and other students who stop out for financial, health-related, or other reasons. Ten percent of our model uses the six-year graduation rate for all students, and another 5% looks at graduation rates for Pell Grant recipients, which is often used as a proxy for low-income students at a given institution. We indexed the Pell graduation rate with the proportion of Pell grant recipients at each institution to reward colleges for enrolling and graduating a larger proportion of low and moderate-income students.

Forbes American Leaders List (15%)

The Forbes American Leaders List aims to gauge the leadership and entrepreneurial success of a college’s graduates. To do this, we count how many listmakers each school produced on the most recent Forbes 30 Under 30, Forbes 400, Richest Self-Made Women and Most Powerful Women lists. We also include the alma maters of members of the Presidential cabinet, Supreme Court, Congress and sitting governors, as well as winners of the MacArthur Fellowship, Nobel Prize, Breakthrough Prize, Lasker Prize, Fields Prize, Academy Awards, Oscars, Tony’s, NAACP Awards, Guggenheim Fellowship, Presidential Medals, Pulitzer Prizes, and major sport all-stars. This measure is weighted at 15%.

Return-on-Investment (15%)

To give us a look at the return on students’—and parents’—investment at a given institution, Third Way provided a price-to-earnings premium for each college. Third Way calculates this number by dividing the total net price of obtaining a college degree by the post-enrollment earnings boost that students get compared to the typical salary a high school graduate in their state. This variable is weighted at 10%. We also included a price-to-earnings premium for low-income students, weighted at 5%.

Retention Rate (10%)

To account for student satisfaction, we looked at IPED’s three-year average full-time student retention rate, which measures the percentage of students who choose to stay after their freshman year. This variable was weighted at 10%.

Academic Success (10%)

We used two measures to assess the academic performance of each college. First, we compiled the number of recent graduates of each college who have gone on to win Fulbright, Truman, Goldwater and Rhodes scholarships. Second, we use data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics to determine the average number of alumni who earned a Ph.D. over the last three years. Each measure is weighted at 5%.

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