Mapped: America’s Best Universities, by Region
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This map shows America’s best universities by census division, using their overall country-wide rank. Data is sourced from the World University Rankings 2024, collated by Times Higher Education.
All university rankings are subjective. This source measured a university’s performance in 18 indicators across five areas. They are: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook. Please visit their methodology page for more information.
The Top Ranked University in Every Census Division
Stanford and MIT are the best in their own divisions, and also the entire country. This table below lists the top three universities in every census division.
| U.S. Rank | Division | University | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pacific | Stanford | California |
| 5 | Pacific | Caltech | California |
| 6 | Pacific | UC Berkeley | California |
| 2 | New England | MIT | Massachusetts |
| 3 | New England | Harvard | Massachusetts |
| 7 | New England | Yale | Connecticut |
| 4 | Middle Atlantic | Princeton | New Jersey |
| 10 | Middle Atlantic | UPenn | Pennsylvania |
| 15 | Middle Atlantic | Carnegie Mellon | Pennsylvania |
| 8 | East North Central | UChicago | Illinois |
| 14 | East North Central | UMich | Michigan |
| 19 | East North Central | Northwestern | Illinois |
| 27 | West North Central | WashU | Missouri |
| 32 | West North Central | UofM | Minnesota |
| 57 | West North Central | University of Iowa | Iowa |
| 9 | South Atlantic | Johns Hopkins | Maryland |
| 17 | South Atlantic | Duke | North Carolina |
| 21 | South Atlantic | Georgia Tech | Georgia |
| 34 | East South Central | Vanderbilt | Tennessee |
| 74 | East South Central | UT, Knoxville | Tennessee |
| 108 | East South Central | Auburn University | Alabama |
| 23 | West South Central | UT Austin | Texas |
| 40 | West South Central | Texas A&M | Texas |
| 41 | West South Central | Rice University | Texas |
| 46 | Mountain | CU Boulder | Colorado |
| 48 | Mountain | UArizona | Arizona |
| 52 | Mountain | Arizona State, Tempe | Arizona |
Washington University is the highest ranked university in the West North Central division. Vanderbilt and UT Austin are the ones to beat down south, and the University of Colorado, Boulder is the mainstay in the Mountain division.
Much in the same way that the world’s best universities are found in America, and then within the country are found on the coasts, good universities tend to cluster together within census divisions as well.
For example, the East South Central division’s highest ranked university is Vanderbilt in Tennessee. The next highest-ranked across the four states is again found in Tennessee. And the same effect plays out in West South Central as well. The top three top universities of the division are all found in Texas.
This can be attributed to how higher education works in America. A mixture of state funding, specialization, and tenure, helped American universities create a virtuous cycle of innovation and research in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Of course, the downside of this cycle is that the same universities tend to attract the best students and faculty, leaving other ones struggling to compete.
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Want to see the same clustering effect on the global scale? Check out The Top 100 Universities in the World, by Region to see how higher education is dominated by a few countries.
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