What Are The Best Ivy League Schools in 2024-2025?

The Best Ivy League Schools in 2024-2025

Understanding the Rankings

In this blog, we'll explore how the Ivy League schools rank for the 2024-2025 academic year based on averages across the most prominent ranking sources.

However, let's not forget that ranking universities is complex and can be arbitrary on some counts too!

1. First, different organizations use different criteria to rank schools, which is why their rankings can vary.
2. Another fact about school rankings is that some criteria may be relevant for an undergraduate experience and others not so much… The final rank doesn’t offer much insight or nuance along these lines.
3. Finally, the criteria used and the weight assigned to them can vary from one year to the next, depending on emerging trends in higher education, impacting in turn how each school ranks in different years compared to its peers.

Rankings are also holistic, formulated from a wide range of criteria and variables, and don’t shine light on specific programs or resources that may offer unique value to individual students, based on a student’s personal goals and interests.

For example, while Harvard, Princeton, and Yale tend to rank near the top of most lists, Brown, Penn, and Cornell may rank highest for a particular major or program.

If students apply to an Ivy League school based solely on their general rankings, they may miss out on an even better opportunity at one of the lower-ranking Ivies or even overlook a great opportunity at a non-Ivy League school.

Overview of Ranking Sources

Here are the best Ivy League schools based on a composite score we calculated using the top-ranking systems:

• US News Best National Universities,
• QS World Rankings
• THE World Rankings (Times Higher Education World Rankings)
• Crimson Education Cross-Yield Rankings (Top 25 US Universities)

How We Determined Our Rankings

Keeping in mind the complexity and variability of the ranking methodologies, we averaged the scores for each Ivy League school across each of the three major ranking outlets listed above to determine our final ranking order. The best Ivy League school in 2024-25 is Harvard, followed by Princeton second, and UPenn third.

While the top spots are familiar — Harvard, Princeton, and UPenn — it's important to remember that each of these eight institutions has specific programs and characteristics that might make it the best choice for different students.