UC Berkeley ranked No. 1 public school in the U.S. by the Wall Street Journal

In new rankings released today (Monday, Sept. 29) by the Wall Street Journal and College Pulse, UC Berkeley was named the No. 1 public college in the country — the second year in a row it received the distinction.

Monday’s ranking comes one week after the release of U.S. News & World Report’s 2026 Best Colleges list, which also named Berkeley as the top public school in the country.

The Wall Street Journal’s rankings use a unique methodology designed to measure the financial and career success of graduates. It most heavily weighs the impact a college has on graduate salaries, beyond an estimate of what they would have earned from attending college in general. After graduate salaries, the rankings considered factors such as graduation rates and diversity, and used a survey of 120,000 students and recent alumni from colleges across the country to measure teaching quality, student satisfaction and more.

“Today’s ranking in the Wall Street Journal confirms Berkeley’s role as an extraordinary engine of economic mobility for many thousands of students every year,” said Chancellor Rich Lyons. “Over the course of the last decade, the estimated return on a Berkeley student’s investment jumped by 30%, from $255,000 to $331,000. That, combined with our world-class research enterprise, is just part of what makes Berkeley one of society’s greatest assets.”

Several other University of California campuses ranked highly on Monday’s report, with UC Davis and UC Merced coming in as the No. 2 and No. 3 public schools in the country, respectively. Berkeley was ranked as the No. 7 school in the country overall; Stanford was ranked at No. 1, followed by Babson College and Yale University at No. 2 and No. 3.

The Wall Street Journal and U.S. News rankings are the latest in a number of recent distinctions honoring Berkeley’s academic and entrepreneurial excellence. Earlier this month, PitchBook ranked Berkeley No. 1 on a global list of universities in terms of the number of venture-backed companies founded by undergraduate alumni, the third year in a row that Berkeley took the top spot. And in April, U.S. News ranked nine of Berkeley’s professional schools and doctoral programs as the best in the nation, out of 50 total programs measured. Thirty-two Berkeley programs placed in the top five on that list.

This year, Berkeley was also named the top public university in the U.S. on Forbes’ list of America’s Top Colleges and the U.S. News Best Global Universities rankings.