BYU is one of the top universities in the nation, according to new Wall Street Journal rankings

Newly released rankings from The Wall Street Journal recognize Brigham Young University as one of the best universities in the country.

BYU comes in at No. 20 overall in the 2024 Best Colleges in America rankings from The Wall Street Journal and College Pulse, joining the likes of Princeton, MIT, Yale, Stanford and Harvard in the top 25.

The new rankings put a greater focus on the value added by colleges, with an emphasis on how much a college improves its students’ chances of graduating on time, and how much it boosts the salaries they earn after graduation.

In the subcategory of “salary impact,” BYU ranked even higher, coming in at No. 13 in the country. BYU also earned the No. 26 spot in the subcategory of “social mobility” and recorded the highest student recommendation score of all 400 schools ranked. BYU scored 93/100 on the recommendation score, which measured

• The extent to which students would recommend their college to a friend
• Whether students would choose the same college again if they could start over
• Satisfaction with the value for money their college provides

For reference, No. 1 overall Princeton earned a recommendation score of 84.

The rankings were developed in collaboration with research partners College Pulse and Statista and put students’ experiences at the heart of the methodology in one of the largest surveys of U.S. students ever conducted.

“Some college-ranking methodologies tend to have the effect of splitting universities into the haves and the have-nots by evaluating the resources a college has at its disposal,” reads a WSJ story on the rankings published Sept. 6. “The new WSJ/College Pulse ranking uses the most recent available data to put colleges on a more level playing field, with a focus on comparing the outcomes of each school’s graduates to what those students were likely to achieve no matter where they went to school.”

The WSJ rankings weigh student outcomes (i.e., salary impact, years to pay off net price, graduation rate) at 70%, learning environment (learning opportunities, preparation for career, recommendation score) at 20% and diversity (opportunities to interact with students from different backgrounds, ethnic diversity, international diversity) at 10%.

The Wall Street Journal has published college rankings since 2016.