This NJ College Ranks Number One In The Nation, Wall Street Journal Says

NEW JERSEY — Nine institutions in New Jersey are among the 500 best public and private colleges and universities in the country, according to the 2025 rankings from The Wall Street Journal.

In fact, the top school in the nation is right here in New Jersey. Princeton University is the number one institution in the country, according to The WSJ/College Pulse 2025 Best Colleges in the U.S. ranking. Eight other New Jersey colleges made the list (see below).

Princeton University topped the ranking for the second year in a row.

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.

“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.”

No other school in the top 50 is from New Jersey.

Nine colleges from the Garden State included in the full ranking are:

• 1 Princeton University, Princeton; private university; overall score 92.3
• 94 The College of New Jersey, Ewing; public university; overall score 76.7
• 106 Montclair State University, Montclair; public university; overall score 75.9
• 114 New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark; public university; overall score 75.3
• 124 Rutgers University, New Brunswick; public university; overall score 74.7
• 127 Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken; private university; overall score 74.6
• 237 Stockton University, Galloway; public university; overall score 63.9
• 285 Seton Hall University, South Orange; private university; overall score 59.9
• 338 Rowan University, Glassboro; public university; overall score 55

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.