The Best College in Each State

There’s a lot to consider when choosing a college, from program offerings and location to acceptance rate and tuition.

Niche, an online platform, does its best to make your evaluation easier by taking stock of all the relevant data and ranking colleges for you. Prospective students can filter schools by a variety of factors: four- or two-year, private or public, general areas of study, specific majors, tuition cost, student body size, test score requirements, median starting salary after graduation, and more. Only want to see schools that offer early decision, or don’t require an application fee? You can do that, too.

You can also browse by state, which is a fun way to find out which institutions lead the pack wherever you live (or are hoping to go to school). Niche has a very in-depth process for determining these rankings, which involves weighted grades given in nine categories: academics, value, professors, campus, diversity, student life, student surveys on overall experience, local area, and safety. The quality of professors is weighted quite a bit more heavily than, say, the quality of the dining hall, but it’s nice that campus food is considered worth evaluating at all. Niche factors in about half a million student surveys, too, so the breakdown isn’t just a clinical reflection of statistics.

The best colleges overall are of course also the best colleges in their respective states. For Connecticut, that’s first-place finisher Yale University; runner-up Stanford University holds the top spot for California; and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in third place, edged out Harvard University (fourth place overall) on the Massachusetts list. Yes, Ivy League schools perform well in Niche’s breakdown. But if you want to filter for only public schools, again, that’s easy to do.

See which college took the top spot in each state below, and explore Niche’s offerings here.

• Alabama // Auburn University
• Alaska // University of Alaska Southeast
• Arizona // Arizona State University
• Arkansas // University of Arkansas
• California // Stanford University
• Colorado // Colorado College
• Connecticut // Yale University
• Delaware // University of Delaware
• Florida // University of Florida
• Georgia // Georgia Institute of Technology
• Hawaii // University of Hawaii at Manoa
• Idaho // University of Idaho
• Illinois // Northwestern University
• Indiana // University of Notre Dame
• Iowa // Grinnell College
• Kansas // The University of Kansas
• Kentucky // University of Kentucky
• Louisiana // Tulane University
• Maine // Bowdoin College
• Maryland // Johns Hopkins University
• Massachusetts // Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Michigan // University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
• Minnesota // Macalester College
• Mississippi // University of Mississippi
• Missouri // Washington University in St. Louis
• Montana // Montana Technological University
• Nebraska // University of Nebraska – Lincoln
• Nevada // Nevada State University
• New Hampshire // Dartmouth College
• New Jersey // Princeton University
• New Mexico // New Mexico Tech
• New York // Columbia University
• North Carolina // Duke University
• North Dakota // North Dakota State University
• Ohio // The Ohio State University
• Oklahoma // Oklahoma State University
• Oregon // Reed College
• Pennsylvania // University of Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island // Brown University
• South Carolina // Clemson University
• South Dakota // South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
• Tennessee // Vanderbilt University
• Texas // Rice University
• Utah // Brigham Young University
• Vermont // Middlebury College
• Virginia // University of Virginia
• Washington // University of Washington
• Washington, D.C. // Georgetown University
• West Virginia // West Virginia University
• Wisconsin // University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Wyoming // University of Wyoming

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