DETHRONED

College Toppled From No. 1 Ranking After 15-Year Run

The school’s leaders had previously dismissed the rankings as a “slightly daft obsession.”

Princeton University has lost its top spot in the U.S. News & World Report rankings after a 15-year run as America’s No. 1 college. This year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology overtook the venerated Ivy League school thanks to its top performance in faculty research, standardized test scores among incoming students, and alumni earnings after graduation. Harvard and Yale’s rankings held steady at No. 3 and 4 respectively, while the California Institute of Technology and Stanford tied for fifth place. No public universities appeared on the list until No. 20, with the University of California campuses in Berkeley and Los Angeles tying for the spot. Princeton declined to comment on losing its No. 1 position, though its president Christopher Eisgruber has in the past blasted the college rankings “game” as a “slightly daft obsession that does harm when colleges, parents, or students take it too seriously.”