Ivy League clinches top 3 spots in ranking of best U.S. colleges

Corrections & clarifications: This story was updated to remove an accompanying video about college rankings.

Yale remains the top university in the United States, according to new data released Thursday by College Factual. The private school in New Haven, Conn. is followed by Harvard (which was No. 5 in last year’s ranking) and the University of Pennsylvania (which dropped from the No. 2 spot).

Duke University, which ranked third last year, slid to the fourth spot, just ahead of Stanford University. Amherst College, Brown University, Cornell, Princeton and Notre Dame round out the top 10.

In this Nov. 20, 2014 photo, Yale University sophomore Yupei Guo, left, walks with friend Joseph Lachman on the school’s campus in New Haven, Conn. (Photo: Jessica Hill, AP Photo)

College Factual examines a unique set of factors when putting together their annual ranking, which feature appearances from the nation’s service academies — Naval Academy (22), Air Force (33) and Military Academy (47).

“Many college rankings focus highly on inputs, such as student test scores, and often include subjective elements such as surveys. College Factual rankings are different as they focus highly on outputs, such as graduation rates and student loan default rates,” says College Factual CEO Bill Phelan. 

These rankings differ from other lists and, according to Phelan, it’s for good reason. Instead of burying methodology in fine print at the bottom of the list, College Factual puts theirs up front. Freshman retention rates, the number of full-time teachers and student loan default rates are all key components in the final rankings.

“We also rank colleges on many different aspects of the education they provide, from overall quality, to best value, to best for a specific major. At the end of the day though we want students to go beyond just rankings to discover colleges that are a great match for them all-around.”

Here’s a closer look at the top 10: