Johns Hopkins ranks near the top of U.S. News & World Report's recently released list of the nation's best colleges and universities. The university is also recognized in the annual rankings for excellence in engineering, undergraduate research, and overall value.
For the third consecutive year, Johns Hopkins sits at 13 on the list of best national universities, which includes 270 schools. JHU has been among the top 15 in the annual rankings for the past six years.
Johns Hopkins tops the biomedical engineering specialty area and is 15th overall on a list of the nation's best undergraduate engineering programs among schools that offer a PhD in engineering.
Johns Hopkins is also one of 32 colleges and universities that excel in undergraduate research, according to U.S. News, and ranks 20th in a category titled Great Schools, Great Prices, up from 32nd last year.
In a separate ranking of the best colleges and universities determined by feedback from high school guidance counselors, Johns Hopkins is tied at first, sharing the top spot with Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.
The U.S. News rankings are compiled using data (much of it provided by the institutions themselves) to determine how a school ranks relative to its peers in seven areas: academic reputation, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, graduation rate performance (defined as the difference between actual and predicted graduation rates), and alumni giving. Scores in these areas are weighted to determine a single composite score.
