These Are The Best Colleges In IL For 2025, Wall Street Journal Says

ILLINOIS — Twenty-two institutions in Illinois are among the 500 best public and private colleges and universities in the country, according to the 2025 rankings from The Wall Street Journal.

Illinois' top school is Augustana College, a private institution in Rock Island, according to The WSJ/College Pulse 2025 Best Colleges in the U.S. ranking. Twenty-one other Illinois 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.”

Schools in the top 50 from Illinois

• Augustana College, Rock Island, private, ranked 37

The other colleges from Illinois included in the full ranking are:

• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, public, ranked 53
• Northwestern University, Evanston, private, ranked 62
• University of Chicago, Chicago, private, ranked 75
• University of Illinois, Chicago, public, ranked 109
• Bradley University, Peoria, private, ranked 118
• DePaul University, Chicago, private, ranked 122
• Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, private, ranked 132
• University of St. Francis, Joliet, private, ranked 134
• Illinois State University, Normal, public, ranked 147
• Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, private, ranked 153
• Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, private, ranked 240
• Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, public, ranked 241
• Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, private, ranked 264
• Western Illinois University, Macomb, public, ranked 269
• Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, public, ranked 324
• Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, public, ranked 334
• Wheaton College, Wheaton, private, ranked 350
• Millikin University, Decatur, private, ranked 399
• Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, public, ranked 433
• Knox College, Galesburg, private, ranked 437
• Columbia College Chicago, private, ranked 500

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.