This Is The Top-Ranked College In CA, Wall Street Journal Says

CALIFORNIA — Seventeen institutions in California are among the 500 best public and private colleges and universities in the country, according to the 2025 rankings from The Wall Street Journal.

California’s top school is Stanford University, according to The WSJ/College Pulse 2025 Best Colleges in the U.S. ranking. Sixteen other California colleges made the list (see below).

The Wall Street Journal noted that in the ranking, half of the colleges in the top 50 are new to the list. But the top ranked school remained unchanged from the previous ranking.

New Jersey’s Princeton University, a four-year Ivy League private school known for its rigorous academic standards and selectivity in admissions, topped the ranking for the second year in a row.

“Our ranking measures how well each college sets graduates up for financial success. We look at how much a school improves students’ chances of graduating and their future earnings, balancing these outcomes with feedback from students on college life,” The Journal wrote. “We don’t measure reputation, nor the college’s own finances.”

In California, the Journal's methodology led to some surprising results compared to other college rankings. For example, 10 UC and Cal State campuses were ranked above the University of Southern California.

Schools in the national top 50 in California are:

The Journal said public schools are prominent among colleges that moved up in the rankings. Two are in the top 10 — the University of California, Berkeley at No. 8, and the Georgia Institute of Technology at No. 9. Last year, there were no public schools in the top 10.

The Journal developed the ranking in collaboration with research partners College Pulse and Statista.

Read more on the methodology and findings on The Wall Street Journal.