These 7 MD Colleges Among Top 10 In America, According To Wall Street Journal

MARYLAND — Seven Maryland colleges and universities are named among the 500 "Best Colleges In The U.S." for 2025, in a newly-released ranking by The Wall Street Journal and College Pulse.

The study ranks these Maryland colleges, and the others on the list, by how well they set graduates up for financial success — and also takes students' overall satisfaction and personal recommendations into account.

“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.”

Here are the Maryland colleges, including their overall rank and their score out of 100:

• No. 23 Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, score of 83.1
• No. 40 Towson University, Towson, score of 81.2
• No. 92 Johns Hopkins University, score of 76.9
• No. 113 University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, score of 75.5
• No. 176 McDaniel College, Westminster, score of 69.6
• No. 218 University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, score of 65.5
• No. 343 Salisbury University, Salisbury, score of 54.5

"The colleges in this ranking have found many ways to set their students up to succeed," study authors said.

Within the ranking, colleges are also listed based on student experience, best salaries for recent graduates, social mobility, and best value.

These are the top 10 colleges nationally, according to the WSJ list:

1. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
2. Babson College, Wellesley, MA
3. Stanford University, Stanford, CA
4. Yale University, New Haven, CT
5. Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
7. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
8. University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
9. Georgia Institute of Technology, Main Campus, Atlanta, GA
10. Davidson College, Davidson, NC

Their study includes a number of well-known schools and some lesser-known campuses, ranking both public and private colleges, as well as technical schools and liberal arts institutions. Each school was given a score out of 100, with student outcomes making 70 percent of the score.

The learning environment on campus (20 percent) and the diversity of the student body (10 percent) are also included — with the study taking inclusion of students with lower family earnings and with disabilities into account for the diversity portion.

Read more from the Journal.