Education

These are the Massachusetts schools to make WSJ’s list of top colleges

The rankings, published by The Wall Street Journal, feature four Massachusetts schools in the top 10 and put an emphasis on a school's value.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was in the top-10 of Wall Street Journal's 2024 college rankings. Craig F. Walker/Boston Globe

By Katelyn Umholtz

September 11, 2023

2 minutes to read

Massachusetts is known for attracting some of the brightest college students to attend its several prestigious universities, often landing in the top-10 campus lists each year.

It was announced last week that a handful of area colleges appeared in the top-10 rankings for 2024 published by The Wall Street Journal — though a Massachusetts university didn’t grab the top spot.

The Wall Street Journal

National college rankings, especially the popular list from U.S. News & World Report, have been lambasted by some in the higher education community for questionable criteria and promoting prestige over quality and value.

But the latest ranking from WSJ/College Pulse 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S. said it “put even greater emphasis” on the value schools provide when it comes to graduating on time and the salaries they earn in the job market.

“Some college-ranking methodologies tend to have the effect of splitting universities into the haves and the have-nots by evaluating the resources a college has at its disposal,” WSJ reports. “Working with data scientists at Statista, the new WSJ/College Pulse ranking uses the most recent available data to put colleges on a more level playing field, with a focus on comparing the outcomes of each school’s graduates to what those students were likely to achieve no matter where they went to school.”

Ranking at No. 1 was Princeton University, a prestigious Ivy League school that is no stranger to the top spot. In the No. 2 spot? Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Other Massachusetts institutions in the top 10 were Harvard University at No. 6, Amherst College at No. 8, and Babson College at No. 10.

Below is the full top-10 ranking of schools from the WSJ:

Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge
Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut
Stanford University in Stanford, California
Columbia University in New York City
Harvard University in Cambridge
University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia
Amherst College in Amherst
Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California
Babson College in Wellesley

Here is how the 22 Massachusetts institutions on the list ranked:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge: 2
Harvard University, Cambridge: 6
Amherst College, Amherst: 8
Babson College, Wellesley: 10
Williams College, Williamstown: 31
Boston College, Chestnut Hill: 45
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester: 60
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester: 61
Wellesley College, Wellesley: 117
University of Massachusetts – Lowell, Lowell: 137
Northeastern University, Boston: 138
Stonehill College, Easton: 157
University of Massachusetts – Amherst, Amherst: 190
Boston University, Boston: 200
Brandeis University, Waltham: 223
University of Massachusetts – Boston, Boston, 242
Suffolk University, Boston: 244
Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater: 281
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley: 282
Tufts University, Medford: 287
Smith College, Northampton: 312
Clark University, Worcester: 367

WSJ broke down their methodology, with student outcomes accounting for 70% of the school’s score — that includes a student’s salary impact, how long it takes them to pay off their debt, and graduation rates. Learning environment accounted for 20% and diversity for 10%.

It’s this methodology, WSJ reports, that pushed some prestigious schools — Brown University and Johns Hopkins University, for example — lower and “surfaced some hidden gems.” This ranking looks at 400 universities, and you can search for a university by name or filter by state.