These 3 CA Colleges Among Top 10 In America, According To Wall Street Journal

CALIFORNIA — Three of the top 10 schools in The Wall Street Journal/College Pulse 2025 Best Colleges in the U.S. are in California, including one Golden State school that cracked the top three.

Stanford University came in third on the list, preceded by Princeton University in first and Babson College in second.

“Stanford is one of 17 California colleges in the top 50, up from six last year and by the far the most for any state,” according to the Journal.

Claremont McKenna University in Claremont just made it into the top five, coming in fifth, while Yale University was fourth.

“Our ranking measures how well each college sets graduates up for financial success,” according to the Journal. “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. We don’t measure reputation, nor the college’s own finances.”

The University of California, Berkeley ranked eighth on the list, marking a departure from last year’s top 10, which didn’t include any public schools, according to the Journal. The Massachesetts Institute of Technology was sixth, Harvard University was seventh, the Georgia Institute of Technology was ninth and Davidson College was tenth.

Six of the ranking’s top 10 public schools were in California, including the University of California, Berkeley, which came in first, and the University of California, Davis, which was third. San José State University and the University of California, Merced rounded out the top five. California State Polytechnic University in Pomona was seventh and California State University, Stanislaus was ninth.

Among the schools with the highest scores for career preparation among surveyed students and recent alumni, The Master’s University in Santa Clarita ranked ninth. The Master’s University also came in fourth on the ranking’s top 10 schools most highly recommended by students and recent alumni.

Read more from the Journal.