On Sept. 24, the U.S. News and World Report released its “Best National Colleges” ranking for 2025, revealing that Brandeis has dropped another three spots from its ranking of 60 in 2024. Now, the University finds itself tied at 63 with George Washington University, Michigan State University, Pennsylvania State University’s University Park campus, Santa Clara University, Tulane University and the University of Miami. 

This change reflects Brandeis’ drastic shift in the U.S. News and World Report’s 2024 ranking from last year, where it notably fell 16 spots — from 44 to 60. After the University learned of this loss, President Ronald Liebowitz addressed the matter in a Sept. 18, 2023 email. He pointed to “significant changes in methodology” that then “removed or decreased the weighting of indicators that were favorable to private institutions.” These changes include reducing the importance of faculty salaries, reducing the value of financial resources per student and eliminating metrics related to “class size, faculty with a terminal degree, alumni giving and high school standing.” Liebowitz also mentioned a change in the report’s consideration of “expected graduation rates” instead of true graduation rates, which he claimed to favor larger institutions, for example.

Following the release of this year’s ranking, Liebowitz has not addressed the community as of press time. 

The U.S. News and World Report explains that due to fewer methodology changes to create the 2025 ranking, “117 of these schools stayed exactly in place in this edition, compared to just 80 the year before.” The majority of institutions saw minor changes. In fact, the institutions in the middle of the list were more likely to face more significant annual changes because their data is similar to each other. Institutions at the higher or lower ends of the list are outliers, since their data is not similar to other schools. 

The U.S. News and World Report added that within the institutions with changed rankings in 2024, “neither public nor private schools were advantaged, as evidenced by the net changes in rank among all schools in subgroups being close to [zero].” Instead, the institution said that the most impactful change in methodology was “the removal of six-year bachelor’s graduation rates of first-generation students as a ranking factor,” or more specifically, “the rate at which a cohort of students graduate in the six-year period after enrollment.” The team replaced this factor with putting more emphasis on Pell Grant student graduation. That being said, this change had a “minimal” impact for “the majority of schools.”

Brandeis has also fallen on the U.S. News and World Report’s “Best Undergraduate Teaching—National Universities” list, falling from 48 in 2024 to 70 in 2025. Now, the University is tied with several institutions, including but not limited to Columbia University, Auburn University, Clark Atlanta University, Florida International University, Grand Valley State University and Seattle University.

Despite dropping ranks on the National University rankings and in its “Best Undergraduate Teaching” lists, the U.S. News and World Report has given the University a notable upward trend on its "Best Values Schools" list, putting Brandeis at 31. This ranking is eight spots higher than its 2024 position, and 10 spots higher than its ranking from 2023. 

“These are schools that are above average academically and cost considerably less than many other schools when the financial aid that they dispense in the form of need-based grants and scholarships is taken into account,” Chief Data Strategist Robert Morose and Principal Data Analyst Eric Brooks for U.S. News explain.