After spending a year in ninth place, Brown fell to 13th in the 2025 U.S. News Best Colleges rankings, the only school to fall out of the top 10 this year.

The national rankings published by U.S. News and World Report are based on a number of criteria, including graduation rates and research outcomes. More than half of a college’s ranking depends on “how successful an institution is at admitting and graduating students from diverse backgrounds with manageable debt and success after graduation,” according to U.S. News.

Brown returns to the same spot it held in the publication’s 2023 rankings. Last year, the university ranked ninth, according to U.S. News, its highest ranking since 1997. Brown is now tied with Columbia for 13th, the second-lowest ranking of an Ivy League university, only Dartmouth is better. Both Brown and Penn have dropped four spots, more than any other university in the top 20.

The top three ranked universities remain the same as last year, with Princeton taking first place and MIT and Harvard following behind. A leaked list of the top 10 universities was published by the Daily Pennsylvanian earlier this month, the first indication that Brown did not finish in the top 10.

Last year, the publication made significant methodological changes, including adding the first-generation graduation rate to its ranking calculations before removing it for the 2025 rankings. Aside from removing the first-generation graduation rate, the methodology remained largely unchanged.

Brown also performed well in the publication’s other rankings, taking first place for professional writing and third for undergraduate teaching programs – the same position as in last year’s ranking.

Despite falling out of the top 10, Brown performs better in the US News rankings compared to university rankings from other publications.

The Wall Street Journal, which measures how well colleges prepare their students for financial success, ranked Brown 36th. This year, Brown rose 31 places in the WSJ rankings, previously ranking 67th.