UC Berkeley is the No. 1 public school in the country

UC Berkeley is the No. 1 public school in the country — tied with UCLA, according to the newest American college rankings by U.S. News and World Report.

The celebratory news comes after a remarkable few years at Berkeley, including two Nobel Prize wins for sitting faculty and a record-breaking fundraising campaign that is well on the way to raising $6 billion for the public campus.

U.S. News and World Report has also regularly called UC Berkeley the top public university in the world.

Across the University of California system, every single undergraduate campus was ranked among the top 100 public and private universities. UC Berkeley and UCLA tied at No. 20, followed by UC Santa Barbara (No. 32), UC Irvine and UC San Diego (tied for No. 34), UC Davis (No. 38), UC Santa Cruz (No. 83), UC Riverside (No. 89) and UC Merced (No. 97).

“The University of California continues to maintain our record of leadership in higher education. These rankings demonstrate the value and impact of our world-renowned excellence in teaching, research, and our demonstrated commitment to inclusiveness,” said UC system President Michael V. Drake, M.D. “I applaud all of our campuses for their outstanding work in maintaining the University’s long-standing tradition of excellence and for continuing to ensure access to an affordable education for all students.”

The rankings assessed an all-time high of 1,500 U.S. bachelor’s degree-granting institutions on 17 measures of academic quality. These measures include graduation and retention rates, financial resources, Pell Grant graduation rates — a measure of social mobility — student-faculty ratio, faculty resources and academic reputation

Berkeley regularly succeeds in a variety of rankings, including in 2021 when Forbes magazine called UC Berkeley the best university — public or private — in the country.