Colorado Universities Gain Ground in 2025 Best Colleges Ranking

Colorado universities are making slight progress on the national stage, according to an annual ranking of United States colleges.

Eight Colorado schools cracked the Wall Street Journal's list of the top 500 universities in the country this year. That's up from six on the 2024 list. In addition, Colorado's highest-ranking school came in at 104th place, compared to last year, when the state's top college was ranked at just 182nd.

While four Colorado universities ranked lower on the 2025 list than in 2024, two universities improved their standings and two new schools joined the list. Five of the state's top universities are public schools while three are private, and three of the colleges are located in Denver.

The latest edition of the annual list came out on September 4, analyzing universities based primarily on student outcomes like salary, graduation rate and time to pay off education costs. The list, developed with research firm College Pulse, also takes into consideration the learning environment and diversity of universities.

Colorado School of Mines ranked highest in the state as the 104th-best college in the country. Last year the school was not featured on WSJ's top colleges tally at all.

School of Mines also secured sixteenth place on WSJ's list of "colleges that make new graduates rich," analyzing the school's impact on graduates’ salaries in relation to the cost of attendance. The Golden-based public university ranked among the likes of first-place Massachusetts Institute of Technology and even beat out eighteenth-place Yale University.

No other Colorado colleges made the top twenty in any of WSJ's niche lists, including rankings for student experience, social mobility and best value.

The University of Colorado Boulder came next on the general list, ranking 228th-best in the country — eighteen spots higher than its 2024 ranking of 246th. Colorado College jumped seven places, from 339th last year to 332nd this year. Metropolitan State University of Denver placed 423rd after not making the list last year, though last year's list was only the top 400 universities, not the top 500.

The University of Colorado Denver fell from 182nd last year to 232nd this year, going from the state's top-rated school to the third, behind School of Mines and CU Boulder. Three other Colorado universities also slipped in their rankings: the University of Denver (229th to 260th), Colorado State University Fort Collins (250th to 290th) and Colorado Christian University (394th to 481st).

Here's how the Colorado universities stack up in the 2025 ranking:

104. Colorado School of Mines
228. University of Colorado, Boulder
232. University of Colorado, Denver
260. University of Denver
290. Colorado State University, Fort Collins
332. Colorado College
423. Metropolitan State University of Denver
481. Colorado Christian University

Here are the top ten schools nationally:

1. Princeton University (New Jersey)
2. Babson College (Massachusetts)
3. Stanford University (California)
4. Yale University (Connecticut)
5. Claremont McKenna College (California)
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts)
7. Harvard University (Massachusetts)
8. University of California, Berkeley (California)
9. Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia)
10. Davidson College (North Carolina)