North Carolina Universities Named Among The Best Colleges In America

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For anyone seeking higher education, especially for students starting their senior year of high school, choosing where to pursue your degree can be a difficult decision.

Using 17 measures of academic quality, U.S. News & World Report analyzed 1,500 institutions to compile a list of the best colleges in the U.S. for 2022-2023. While the top of the list is filled with mostly Ivy Leagues, there are several public and private universities that found a spot on the list, including several of North Carolina's most popular colleges. One even made the Top 10.

So which North Carolina universities were named among of the best colleges in the country?

  • No. 10: Duke University
  • No. 29: (TIED) University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University
  • No. 72: N.C. State University
  • No. 89: Elon University
  • No. 202: UNC-Wilmington
  • No. 219: (TIED) UNC-Greensboro and UNC-Charlotte
  • No. 234: East Carolina University
  • No. 263: Western Carolina University
  • No. 285: Winston-Salem State University
  • No. 299: (TIED) Campbell University and N.C. Agricultural and Technical State University.

Duke University in Durham received the highest ranking of any North Carolina college on the list. A selective university founded in 1838 with an undergraduate enrollment of 6,883 as of Fall 2021, Duke has an acceptance rate of 6%.

These are the Top 20 colleges in America:

  1. Princeton University (New Jersey)
  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts)
  3. Harvard University (Massachusetts)
  4. Stanford University (California)
  5. Yale University (Connecticut)
  6. University of Chicago (Illinois)
  7. TIED: Johns Hopkins University (Maryland) and University of Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania)
  8. N/A
  9. California Institute of Technology (California)
  10. TIED: Duke University (North Carolina) and Northwestern University (Illinois)
  11. N/A
  12. Dartmouth College (New Hampshire)
  13. TIED: Brown University (Rhode Island) and Vanderbilt University (Tennessee)
  14. N/A
  15. TIED: Rice University (Texas) and Washington University in St. Louis (Missouri)
  16. N/A
  17. Cornell University (New York)
  18. TIED: Columbia University (New York) and University of Notre Dame (Indiana)
  19. N/A
  20. TIED: University of California, Berkley and University of California, Los Angeles (both California)

Check out U.S. News & World Report's full list of the best colleges in America for 2023.


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