Penn State is tied for No. 50 among national universities in the U.S. News 2017 Best Colleges Rankings released Tuesday. The university dropped three spots from last year.
The ranking also puts Penn State tied for No. 14 among top public universities.
Pepperdine, Villanova and Florida tied with Penn State to round out the top 50. Princeton ranked No. 1 on the list of 310 national universities, followed by Harvard the University of Chicago and Yale, with Columbia and Stanford tying for fifth.
The most high-profile of college rankings, U.S. News ranks 1,374 colleges and universities and uses multiple factors such as retention and graduation rates, faculty resources, reputation in peer assessment surveys, student selectivity and per-student spending. Schools are ranked in categories of National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities and Regional Colleges.
In Pennsylvania, the University of Pennsylvania (8), Carnegie Mellon (24) and Lehigh (T-44) also made the top 50 national universities along with Penn State and Villanova. The University of Pittsburgh came in tied for No. 68. and Drexel is 96th. Temple tied for No. 118.
Among Big Ten schools, Northwestern (12), Michigan (27), Illinois (T-44) and Wisconsin (T-44) are in the top 50.
