The 14 Best National Universities According To Washington Monthly

RANKED: The 14 Best National Universities

Forget the Ivy League -- you just need to go to a flagship university in California, Michigan, Washington or North Carolina if you want a world-class education.

Our friends at the Washington Monthly published their own ranking Monday of the best universities in the country, and only one Ivy League institution cracks the top 10.

A major difference between the Washington Monthly's ranking and other well-known lists is the magazine does not give credit to schools that reject the most applicants, electing instead to give "high marks to institutions that contribute to society, enroll low-income students."

The list is heavy on campuses from the University of California system, but we can't say we blame them. The University of Texas at Austin doesn't make the cut, but Texas A&M does, ranking ahead of both Harvard and Stanford. Compared to the U.S. News & World Report ranking, which the top 20 is entirely private schools, Washington Monthly's is mostly state universities. Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Yale all fail to even crack the top 50.

The rankings are based on factors under social mobility, research and service, which includes students going into the Peace Corps and ROTC. Full details are available at Washington Monthly's website, where you can see the full list of schools ranked.

See the top 14 below:

1
University of California–San Diego
Thom Watson/Flickr
2
University of California–Riverside
Allen Jaszcar/Flickr
3
University of California–Berkeley
Bloomberg via Getty Images
4
Texas A&M University
Wesley Hitt via Getty Images
5
University of California–Los Angeles
maveric2003/Flickr
6
Stanford University
Png-Studio via Getty Images
7
University of Washington–Seattle
Wonderlane/Flickr
8
University of Texas–El Paso
Courtesy of University of Texas–El Paso
9
Case Western Reserve University
thapgood/Flickr
10
Harvard University
Keith Levit Photography via Getty Images
11
Georgia Institute of Technology
highstrungloner/Flickr
12
University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill
calamity_sal/Flickr
13
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
cseeman/Flickr
14
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Nietnagel/Flickr

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