MIT Tops US News Rankings for First Time

For fifteen years, opening the U.S. News rankings meant seeing Princeton at the top. That streak ended this week.

On September 22, 2026, U.S. News & World Report released its 2027 Best Colleges rankings — the 42nd annual edition — and MIT claimed the #1 spot, ending Princeton's run that dated back to the 2012 edition. Princeton fell to #2. Harvard stayed at #3. Yale held at #4. Caltech climbed six places to tie Stanford for #5.¹

The rankings evaluated nearly 1,700 colleges and universities using up to 17 measures of academic quality and student success — including, for the first time, an "earnings by major" metric.²

If you're deciding where to apply, here's what actually changed and what it means.

Why MIT Moved to #1 Now

MIT didn't suddenly become a better school this year. What changed is how U.S. News is measuring quality.

The 2027 edition included significant methodology changes with a greater focus on the value of an education and graduate earnings. MIT graduates — heavily concentrated in engineering, computer science, and physical sciences — earn among the highest salaries of any college in the country. When earnings become a bigger part of the formula, a school like MIT rises.

Princeton, meanwhile, has historically sent a larger share of graduates into law, public service, and academic careers. Those careers pay well but typically not as immediately or as uniformly as STEM fields in the current labor market.

None of this means MIT is a better school than Princeton for every student. It means the methodology now values something MIT happens to do very well.

That's an important distinction. Understanding how college rankings are built matters more than the headline number. Rankings reflect a set of choices about what counts — and those choices change.

The New Earnings-by-Major Metric

This is the part of the 2027 rankings worth your time.

For the first time, U.S. News is publishing earnings data broken down by major. That means you can now see what a psychology major earns at one school versus another — not just what a generic graduate of that school earns.

This matters because school-level earnings averages are misleading. A university with a dominant engineering program will show high average earnings even if its English or education graduates earn close to the national median. You have been making decisions with distorted data.

The new tool corrects some of that. Combined with other college ROI research by major and data on which majors pay the most, you now have a more accurate picture of what a specific path at a specific school actually leads to.

When using the new earnings-by-major feature, compare schools within the same major — not school-wide averages. A $72,000 median for business graduates at a mid-ranked school is a far more useful data point than a $95,000 school-wide average inflated by a STEM-heavy student body.

What the Shift Means Below the Top 10

The top-10 reshuffle makes headlines, but the methodology change ripples further down the list.

Any school with a strong technical or STEM-oriented focus tends to look better in 2027. Schools whose graduates concentrate in lower-earning fields — arts, education, social work, some humanities — likely slipped, regardless of their actual educational quality.

That creates a distortion worth knowing about. If you plan to study nursing, education, or social work, a school that fell in the 2027 rankings may not have gotten worse at preparing you. It may just have fewer engineers pulling up its median earnings figure.

A recent study on whether your major or school matters more for earnings found that major selection accounts for more of the variation in lifetime earnings than school selectivity — especially outside the top 25. The new U.S. News methodology is a step toward acknowledging that reality.

Don't rebuild your college list based on a rankings change. MIT moving from #2 to #1 doesn't make it a better fit for you than it was last week. If you're working through how to choose a college or deciding between two offers, use the new earnings-by-major data as a research tool — not the rankings headline as a verdict.

What to Do With This Information

The 2027 rankings are worth a look, but not for the horse race at the top.

Find your intended major in the earnings-by-major tool and compare 3–4 schools you're seriously considering. Look for what moved in the middle of the list — the #50–150 range, where most applicants are actually competitive, often sees larger and more meaningful shifts than the top 10.

Treat the methodology change as context: the 2027 rankings reward STEM-heavy graduate outcomes. That tells you something about U.S. News's priorities, not necessarily what's right for your goals.

And use rankings as one input among many. Choosing a college involves cost, academic fit, campus culture, and career resources — factors that no single ranking captures. The list that names MIT #1 and Princeton #2 doesn't know what you want to study, how much you can afford, or what kind of environment helps you do your best work.

The people who understand how the rankings are built will use them more wisely than the people who treat them as gospel.

Footnotes

1. The Washington Post. (2026, September 22). 2027 Best Colleges rankings by U.S. News puts MIT first, Princeton second. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/09/22/2027-best-colleges-rankings-by-us-news-puts-mit-first-princeton-second/ ↩

2. CBS Boston. (2026, September 22). MIT takes top spot in U.S. News college rankings, ending Ivy League school's 15-year run. https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/us-news-college-ranking-2027-mit-princeton/ ↩