In the 2026 edition of the U.S. News and World Report Best National Colleges Ranking, Brandeis University was ranked as number 69. This ranking puts Brandeis in a four-way tie along with Tulane University of Louisiana, the University of Connecticut and the University of Pittsburgh. The ranking of 69th reflects a drop from 63rd in the 2025 edition, 60th in the 2024 edition and 44th in the 2023 edition. Overall, Brandeis’ rankings have fallen 25 positions since 2023.
As of press time, the Brandeis administration has not commented publicly on the new rankings. In a recent interview with Brandeis President Arthur Levine (see pg. X), The Hoot asked about the drop in rankings. Levine pointed to changes in the rankings’ methodology, which he claims hurt Brandeis. Under the recent changes, average class size is not considered as a factor. More than 60% of classes at Brandeis have 19 students or fewer.
Additionally, Levine said that a school’s expected retention rate is more important than the actual retention rate. “If a school is expected to keep 50% of their students and they keep 60%, that helps their ranking. But if a school like Brandeis is expected to keep 91% and we can only keep 90%, that hurts us,” Levine explained. Levine also highlighted how research is not measured relative to a university’s size, so Brandeis is being compared to much larger universities based on the total number of papers published, despite the fact that as a smaller institution, a smaller total number should be expected.
“The one area [of our ranking] we can control is our reputation,” Levine concluded. He emphasized interviews that he had given with local radio networks and the Boston Globe as ways in which to increase Brandeis’ reputation, though he cautioned that this would take time.
It is worth noting that the changes to U.S. News’ methodology that Levine referenced were made in 2023 and that Brandeis has continued to decline since then. The previous administration also blamed Brandeis’ drop in last year’s standings on the new methodology, with then-President Ron Liebowitz stating at the time that “the organization implemented significant changes in methodology this year that led to many dramatic shifts in the rankings by strongly favoring some universities that had been lower in the rankings previously,” and that “in many cases, these changes in methodology removed or decreased the weighting of indicators that were favorable to private institutions like Brandeis.”
