Behind every department is a faculty — the people who will teach, advise, and write recommendation letters for you. This index ranks 192 colleges, field by field, on the research firepower of that faculty: how much they publish, how often they're cited, how much federal R&D they win, and how many are academic notables. It measures research output, not teaching quality.
npx serve .) instead of opening the file directly.Each field is scored separately — a college can be a powerhouse in Engineering and mid-pack in History. Choose a field to see its ranked colleges; the number on each chip is how many colleges have enough matched faculty to rank.
| # | College | Research Strength | Components | Coverage | Median h | Top faculty | FY24 R&D |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | University of Chicago Ivy+ · #12 | A 86 / 98 enriched | 27 | James J. Heckman, John List, Michael Greenstone | $45m | ||
| 2 | University of California, Los Angeles Public Ivy · #15 | A 120 / 129 enriched | 17.5 | Rogers Brubaker, Stuart Soroka, Min Zhou | $119m | ||
| 3 | University of California, Berkeley Public Ivy · #10 | A 100 / 137 enriched | 18.5 | Barry Eichengreen, Emmanuel Saez, Yuriy Gorodnichenko | $101m | ||
| 4 | New York University Elite Private · #35 | A 84 / 98 enriched | 20.5 | Thomas Sargent, Mark Gertler, Ariel Rubinstein | $44m | ||
| 5 | Princeton University Ivy League · #1 | A 85 / 117 enriched | 18 | G. John Ikenberry, Gene M. Grossman, Alan S. Blinder | $75m | ||
| 6 | Northwestern University Elite Private · #9 | B 45 / 91 enriched | 22 | Martin Eichenbaum, Charles Manski, Dean Karlan | $24m | ||
| 7 | Columbia University Ivy League · #8 | B 67 / 161 enriched | 28 | Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Michael Woodford | $15m | ||
| 8 | University of Pennsylvania Ivy League · #6 | A 29 / 35 enriched | 36 | Francis X. Diebold, Jere R. Behrman, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde | $70m | ||
| 9 | Cornell University Ivy League · #11 | A 93 / 109 enriched | 17 | Sidney Tarrow, Ravi Kanbur, Eswar Prasad | $32m | ||
| 10 | Duke University Ivy+ · #7 | A 86 / 93 enriched | 18.5 | Tim Bollerslev, Herbert P. Kitschelt, Duncan Thomas | $47m | ||
| 11 | University of Minnesota, Twin Cities State Flagship · #54 | A 34 / 39 enriched | 22 | Aldo Rustichini, Rachel Croson, Ellen McGrattan | $37m | ||
| 12 | Brown University Ivy League · #9 | A 57 / 75 enriched | 21 | Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, Christina Paxson, Louis Putterman | $39m | ||
| 13 | University of California, Irvine Public Ivy · #33 | A 101 / 112 enriched | 20 | Elizabeth F. Loftus, David Neumark, George Farkas | $16m | ||
| 14 | University of California, San Diego Public Ivy · #29 | A 71 / 77 enriched | 18 | James H. Fowler, Allan Timmermann, James D. Hamilton | $33m | ||
| 15 | Dartmouth College Ivy League · #10 | A 64 / 71 enriched | 21 | Ha Yan Lee, Jonathan Skinner, Douglas O. Staiger | $26m | ||
| 16 | University of Maryland, College Park State Flagship · #44 | A 90 / 100 enriched | 15.5 | John C. Haltiwanger, Maureen Cropper, Peter Cramton | $67m | ||
| 17 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Public Ivy · #33 | A 55 / 80 enriched | 17 | Ghysels, Eric, Duarte, Marco, Marks, Gary | $93m | ||
| 18 | Georgetown University Elite Private · #22 | A 77 / 112 enriched | 15 | George Akerloff, Francis Vella, Arik Levinson | $53m | ||
| 19 | George Washington University Regional · #63 | A 53 / 80 enriched | 16 | Michael N. Barnett, Martha Finnemore, Henry E. Hale | $41m | ||
| 20 | Vanderbilt University Ivy+ · #18 | A 69 / 85 enriched | 13 | W. Kip Viscusi, David E. Lewis, Kamal Saggi | $28m | ||
| 21 | University of Wisconsin-Madison State Flagship · #35 | A 57 / 93 enriched | 15 | Chinn, Menzie, Engel, Charles, Wright, Randall | $89m | ||
| 22 | Boston University Elite Private · #41 | A 71 / 108 enriched | 14 | Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Kevin Lang, Raymond Fisman | $16m | ||
| 23 | University of Washington State Flagship · #40 | A 52 / 56 enriched | 16 | Stephen Turnovsky, Kyle Crowder, Charles Nelson | $25m | ||
| 24 | Yale University Ivy League · #5 | A 39 / 61 enriched | 15 | Ian Shapiro, Steven Smith, Alan Gerber | $23m | ||
| 25 | University of Virginia Public Ivy · #24 | A 68 / 80 enriched | 13.5 | Charles Holt, Simon Anderson, Eric Leeper | $15m | ||
| 26 | Syracuse University Regional · #73 | A 79 / 98 enriched | 12 | Badi H. Baltagi, John Cawley, Brian Taylor | $16m | ||
| 27 | University of California, Santa Barbara Public Ivy · #39 | A 51 / 62 enriched | 16 | Christopher Costello, Andrew Plantinga, Kathy Baylis | $11m | ||
| 28 | Tufts University Elite Private · #40 | A 50 / 68 enriched | 14.5 | Cheryl Doss, Michael Klein, Yannis Ioannides | $16m | ||
| 29 | University of Notre Dame Elite Private · #18 | A 83 / 96 enriched | 12 | Kenneth Scheve, Robert C. Johnson, David Campbell | $17m | ||
| 30 | Washington University in St. Louis Elite Private · #24 | A 48 / 55 enriched | 16.5 | Andrew Jordan, Robert Pollak, Steven Fazzari | $5m | ||
| 31 | University of California, Santa Cruz State Flagship · #84 | A 84 / 114 enriched | 12 | Michael M Hutchison, Robert W Fairlie, Yin-Wong Cheung | $8m | ||
| 32 | University of Massachusetts Amherst State Flagship · #60 | A 54 / 59 enriched | 13 | MJ Peterson, Paul Collins, Lawrence King | $10m | ||
| 33 | George Mason University Regional · #119 | A 32 / 40 enriched | 14.5 | Jack A. Goldstone, Maurice Kugler, John S. Earle | $75m | ||
| 34 | University of Florida Public Ivy · #27 | A 52 / 64 enriched | 12 | Jonathan Hamilton, David Sappington, Michael Bernhard | $17m | ||
| 35 | University of South Florida State Flagship · #91 | A 65 / 92 enriched | 9 | William Greene, Padmaja Ayyagari, John Cochran | $38m | ||
| 36 | Emory University Elite Private · #24 | A 61 / 70 enriched | 14 | Juan Rubio-Ramirez, Tao Zha, Sara J. Markowitz | $5m | ||
| 37 | Rice University Elite Private · #13 | A 22 / 24 enriched | 15 | Tony N. Brown, Elaine Howard Ecklund, James R. Elliott | $25m | ||
| 38 | Michigan State University State Flagship · #63 | A 20 / 21 enriched | 17 | Barbara Schneider, Aaron M. McCright, Zhenmei Zhang | $47m | ||
| 39 | University of Colorado Boulder Selective Public · #98 | A 28 / 36 enriched | 16 | Wolfgang Keller, Miles Spencer Kimball, Yongmin Chen | $18m | ||
| 40 | University of Delaware State Flagship · #86 | A 51 / 60 enriched | 9 | Amy Ellen Schwartz, Paul Brewer, Kent D. Messer | $30m | ||
| 41 | Ohio State University State Flagship · #41 | A 28 / 40 enriched | 15 | Bruce Weinberg, Anil Arya, Joyce Chen | $24m | ||
| 42 | Stony Brook University (SUNY) State Flagship · #58 | A 31 / 40 enriched | 15 | Pradeep Dubey, Stanley Feldman, Leonie Huddy | $3m | ||
| 43 | University of Oregon Regional · #112 | A 39 / 48 enriched | 13 | George Evans, Bruce Blonigen, Christopher Ellis | $6m | ||
| 44 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign State Flagship · #35 | A 33 / 40 enriched | 12 | Jeffrey R Brown, Jing Cynthia Wu, Don Fullerton | $13m | ||
| 45 | University at Albany (SUNY) State Flagship · #129 | A 57 / 62 enriched | 13 | Yue Li, Victor Asal, Tse-Chuan Yang | $19m | ||
| 46 | University of Connecticut State Flagship · #70 | A 54 / 64 enriched | 10.5 | Stephen Ross, Richard N. Langlois, Kathleen Segerson | $13m | ||
| 47 | University of Iowa Regional · #98 | A 42 / 48 enriched | 14.5 | Michael Lewis-Beck, Caroline Tolbert, Sara Mitchell | $5m | ||
| 48 | Binghamton University (SUNY) State Flagship · #73 | A 45 / 53 enriched | 9 | Subal C. Kumbhakar, Solomon W. Polachek, Benjamin Fordham | $23m | ||
| 49 | Tulane University Elite Private · #73 | A 68 / 90 enriched | 13 | James Alm, Nora Lustig, Kevin Fox Gotham | $7m | ||
| 50 | University of Denver Regional · #119 | A 37 / 61 enriched | 12 | Thomas E. Drabek, Seth Masket, Michael C Campbell | $7m | ||
| 51 | Boston College Elite Private · #39 | B 6 / 6 enriched | 20 | Christopher Kelly, Donald Cox, Alan Wolfe | $13m | ||
| 52 | Brandeis University Regional · #63 | A 41 / 48 enriched | 11 | Prakash Kashwan, Raphael Schoenle, Sara Shostak | $28m | ||
| 53 | American University Regional · #91 | B 49 / 107 enriched | 11 | Ji-Young Lee, Andrew Flores, David Barker | $11m | ||
| 54 | University of Missouri Regional · #105 | A 29 / 45 enriched | 15 | William A. Brock, Michael Podgursky, Michael Pesko | $8m | ||
| 55 | University of Alabama Selective Public · #97 | B 37 / 70 enriched | 12 | Karl DeRouen, Richard Fording, Adam Lankford | $10m | ||
| 56 | University of Southern California Elite Private · #28 | A 18 / 23 enriched | 11.5 | Antonio Bento, Daniel Bennett, Laurie Brand | $84m | ||
| 57 | Brigham Young University Regional · #112 | A 46 / 58 enriched | 11.5 | Lars J. Lefgren, Jaren C. Pope, Eric R. Eide | $10m | ||
| 58 | Claremont McKenna College Elite Private · #33 | A 52 / 67 enriched | 9 | Ricardo Fernholz, Richard Burdekin, Heather Antecol | $5m | ||
| 59 | Clemson University State Flagship · #80 | A 23 / 34 enriched | 15 | Paul Wilson, Charles Thomas, Matthew Lewis | $8m | ||
| 60 | Colorado School of Mines State Flagship · #76 | A 16 / 26 enriched | 20 | Morgan D. Bazilian, John Tilton, Roderick G. Eggert | $1m | ||
| 61 | Wellesley College Elite Private · #28 | A 47 / 60 enriched | 12 | Phillip Levine, Peggy Levitt, Jonathan Imber | $1m | ||
| 62 | College of William & Mary Public Ivy · #54 | A 50 / 73 enriched | 9 | David H. Feldman, Michael Tierney, Jennifer M. Mellor | $14m | ||
| 63 | San Diego State University State Flagship · #119 | B 42 / 80 enriched | 8.5 | Joseph Sabia, Hank Johnston, Audrey N. Beck | $8m | ||
| 64 | University at Buffalo (SUNY) State Flagship · #76 | A 34 / 42 enriched | 10 | Alex Anas, Isaac Ehrlich, Debra Street | $4m | ||
| 65 | Case Western Reserve University Selective Private · #51 | B 9 / 11 enriched | 18 | Roman Sheremeta, Susan Helper, Mark Votruba | $11m | ||
| 66 | Louisiana State University Selective Public · #147 | A 39 / 44 enriched | 8 | Matthew R. Lee, Wesley M. Shrum, Jr., James Garand | $8m | ||
| 67 | Wesleyan University Selective Private · #39 | A 54 / 72 enriched | 10 | J. Donald Moon, Gary Yohe, Erika Franklin Fowler | $0m | ||
| 68 | Southern Methodist University Regional · #91 | A 30 / 50 enriched | 10 | Daniel Millimet, Bo Chen, Klaus Desmet | $2m | ||
| 69 | University of Vermont State Flagship · #134 | A 26 / 31 enriched | 9 | Leigh Raymond, Lisa M. Holmes, Marc Law | $15m | ||
| 70 | University of Maryland, Baltimore County State Flagship · #129 | A 30 / 42 enriched | 7.5 | Dennis C. Coates, Michael Andrews, David F. Mitch | $22m | ||
| 71 | Vassar College Top LAC · #13 | B 21 / 36 enriched | 8 | Elizabeth H. Bradley, Paul A. Johnson, Fubing Su | $0m | ||
| 72 | Santa Clara University Regional · #63 | A 21 / 29 enriched | 12 | William A. Sundstrom, Thomas Russell, Christian Helmers | $0m | ||
| 73 | Middlebury College Elite Private · #30 | A 42 / 56 enriched | 10 | Jeffrey Carpenter, John Maluccio, Erik Bleich | $0m | ||
| 74 | Barnard College Top LAC · #12 | B 27 / 46 enriched | 11 | Rajiv Sethi, Sheri E. Berman, Alexander A. Cooley | $1m | ||
| 75 | University of Oklahoma Regional · #112 | A 16 / 23 enriched | 10.5 | Firat Demir, Qihong Liu, Jayash Paudel | $23m | ||
| 76 | Wake Forest University Selective Private · #47 | A 49 / 66 enriched | 8 | Fred Chen, Peter Siavelis, Catherine Harnois | $5m | ||
| 77 | Bryn Mawr College Top LAC · #33 | A 20 / 31 enriched | 7.5 | Michael H. Allen, Wendy A Cadge, Joel Alden Schlosser | $1m | ||
| 78 | College of the Holy Cross Top LAC · #30 | A 45 / 63 enriched | 6 | John Carter, Edward Thompson Jr., Charles Anderton | — | ||
| 79 | Haverford College Top LAC · #16 | C 17 / 45 enriched | 7 | Anne Preston, Zachary Oberfield, Barak Mendelsohn | $0m | ||
| 80 | Pomona College Elite Private · #15 | A 35 / 50 enriched | 8 | Gary N. Smith, Tahir R. Andrabi, Pierre Englebert | $1m | ||
| 81 | Colgate University Selective Private · #46 | A 44 / 65 enriched | 7 | Michael Johnston, Michael Haines, Takao Kato | $0m | ||
| 82 | Lafayette College Top LAC · #38 | A 30 / 38 enriched | 8.5 | W. Mark Crain, David Stifel, John Kincaid | $0m | ||
| 83 | Florida International University State Flagship · #98 | A 26 / 40 enriched | 6 | Shlomi Dinar, John F. Clark, Tatiana Kostadinova | $24m | ||
| 84 | Bard College Top LAC · #88 | A 46 / 67 enriched | 4 | Walter Russell Mead, Omar G. Encarnación, Dimitri B. Papadimitriou | — | ||
| 85 | Rhodes College Top LAC · #52 | A 15 / 22 enriched | 7 | Be Stone, Michael Nelson, C. Nicholas McKinney | — | ||
| 86 | Davidson College Elite Private · #40 | A 20 / 28 enriched | 8 | Ken Menkhaus, Brian J. Shaw, Katherine Bersch | $1m | ||
| 87 | Trinity College Top LAC · #46 | C 6 / 17 enriched | 11.5 | Miguel D. Ramirez, Edward Stringham, Isaac A. Kamola | $1m | ||
| 88 | Hamilton College Elite Private · #37 | A 30 / 38 enriched | 5.5 | Ann Owen, Stephen Wu, Alan Cafruny | $1m | ||
| 89 | Bowdoin College Elite Private · #23 | A 36 / 42 enriched | 7 | Erik Nelson, Michael Franz, Rachel Connelly | $0m | ||
| 90 | Lehigh University Selective Private · #46 | A 17 / 21 enriched | 6 | Laura K. Olson, Breena Holland, Richard K. Matthews | $1m | ||
| 91 | Colby College Elite Private · #47 | A 34 / 39 enriched | 7 | Neil Gross, Damon Mayrl, Andreas Waldkirch | $0m | ||
| 92 | Oberlin College Top LAC · #28 | A 21 / 32 enriched | 8 | David Forrest, Michael Parkin, John V. Duca | $0m | ||
| 93 | Texas Christian University Regional · #105 | B 9 / 11 enriched | 10 | Stephen Quinn, John T. Harvey, Robert Garnett | $0m | ||
| 94 | Loyola University Chicago Regional · #105 | A 24 / 35 enriched | 7.5 | David Doherty, Peter J. Schraeder, Alexandru V. Grigorescu | $2m | ||
| 95 | Carleton College Top LAC · #6 | A 31 / 46 enriched | 6 | Alfred Montero, Barbara Allen, Nathan Grawe | $1m | ||
| 96 | California State University, Long Beach Public Ivy · #129 | B 17 / 41 enriched | 4 | Kerry Woodward, Shelley Eriksen, Carole Campbell | $1m | ||
| 97 | University of Richmond Elite Private · #22 | A 25 / 37 enriched | 6 | Dean Croushore, Richard Dagger, Sandra F. Joireman | $0m | ||
| 98 | Union College Top LAC · #41 | A 12 / 17 enriched | 7.5 | Lori Jo Marso, Zoe Oxley, Salil D. Benegal | $0m | ||
| 99 | Reed College Top LAC · #47 | A 13 / 18 enriched | 10 | Chris Koski, Marc Schneiberg, Paul Gronke | $1m | ||
| 100 | Grinnell College Top LAC · #14 | A 32 / 47 enriched | 7 | Mark Montgomery, Karla A. Erickson, Susan J. Ferguson | $1m | ||
| 101 | Gettysburg College Top LAC · #56 | A 26 / 35 enriched | 6.5 | Bruce Anders Larson, Caroline A. Hartzell, Voon Chin Phua | $0m | ||
| 102 | Marquette University Regional · #86 | A 13 / 21 enriched | 10 | Philip Rocco, Risa Brooks, Lowell Barrington | $1m | ||
| 103 | Macalester College Top LAC · #24 | A 25 / 35 enriched | 9 | Christina Hughes, David L. Blaney, Sarah West | $0m | ||
| 104 | Bucknell University Top LAC · #35 | A 27 / 33 enriched | 6 | David Mitchell, Thomas Kinnaman, Matias Vernengo | $0m | ||
| 105 | Creighton University Regional · #119 | A 10 / 16 enriched | 6 | Colin O'Reilly, Ernest P. Goss, Terry D. Clark | $1m | ||
| 106 | Bates College Top LAC · #20 | A 26 / 40 enriched | 4 | Michael Rocque, Michael P. Murray, James W. Hughes | $0m | ||
| 107 | Swarthmore College Elite Private · #17 | A 22 / 28 enriched | 10 | John Caskey, Maria Pia Olivero, Susanne Schwarz | $1m | ||
| 108 | Loyola Marymount University Regional · #91 | B 6 / 6 enriched | 4.5 | Nathan Chan, Gabriele Magni, Chaya Crowder | $1m | ||
| 109 | Pepperdine University Selective Private · #80 | A 21 / 27 enriched | 4 | Joel S. Fetzer, Brandon Parsons, Dan E. Caldwell | $3m | ||
| 110 | Colorado College Top LAC · #27 | A 23 / 34 enriched | 6 | Timothy Fuller, Juan Lindau, Cayce Hughes | $1m | ||
| 111 | Connecticut College Top LAC · #42 | A 21 / 32 enriched | 6 | Robert Gay, Andrew Levin, Maria Cruz-Saco | $0m | ||
| 112 | Howard University Selective Private · #86 | A 15 / 23 enriched | 3 | Keesha M. Middlemass, Richard Seltzer, Clarence Lusane | $2m | ||
| 113 | University of San Diego Regional · #112 | B 19 / 39 enriched | 4 | Ronald Niezen, Adina Batnitzky, David Shirk | $1m | ||
| 114 | Whitman College Top LAC · #48 | A 19 / 25 enriched | 5 | Alissa Cordner, Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, Denise Hazlett | $1m | ||
| 115 | Skidmore College Top LAC · #37 | A 25 / 35 enriched | 6 | Christopher B. Mann, Jennifer C. Mueller, Catherine White Berheide | $0m | ||
| 116 | Kenyon College Top LAC · #32 | A 25 / 41 enriched | 6 | Marci Cottingham, Jay Corrigan, Jan Thomas | $0m | ||
| 117 | Denison University Top LAC · #39 | A 17 / 28 enriched | 4 | Shiri Noy, Fadhel Kaboub, Emily Marshall | $0m | ||
| 118 | Centre College Top LAC · #53 | B 9 / 18 enriched | 2 | David A. Anderson, John J. Perry, Maria Apostolova-Mihaylova | — | ||
| 119 | Furman University Top LAC · #50 | A 22 / 29 enriched | 3.5 | David Fleming, Elizabeth Smith, Brent Nelsen | $0m | ||
| 120 | Sewanee: The University of the South Top LAC · #43 | A 19 / 26 enriched | 3 | Amy S. Patterson, Scott Howard Wilson, Aaron A. Elrod | — | ||
| 121 | St. Olaf College Top LAC · #55 | B 16 / 33 enriched | 3.5 | Seth Binder, Christopher B Chapp, Ashley Hodgson | $0m |
A quick snapshot of the highest Research Strength scores in the three most-covered fields. Pick a field above for the full ranking, component breakdown, and faculty detail.
Research Strength is a 0–100 score for each (college, field) pair. It blends four things about the college's matched faculty in that field: the quality of their research record, the presence of top-decile stars, the federal R&D dollars the field pulls in, and academic notability. It is a measure of research output — not of teaching quality or how good a place a department is to be an undergraduate.
| Component | Weight | What it captures |
|---|---|---|
| Quality | 45% | Field-relative research percentile of the matched faculty, empirical-Bayes shrunk. |
| Stars | 25% | Saturating count of top-decile (star) faculty in the field. |
| Funding | 20% | Field-relative percentile of federal R&D dollars. |
| Notability | 10% | Share of faculty with Wikipedia or elite-society presence. |
For each college's faculty in a field, we take an empirical-Bayes-shrunk mean of their field-relative research percentiles (Quality), a saturating count of top-decile faculty (Stars), the field-relative percentile of federal R&D dollars (Funding), and the share with Wikipedia or elite-society presence (Notability). Each component is scaled 0–1, then blended by the weights above and re-normalized over whichever components exist for that cell — so a college is never penalized for a component we simply don't have. Percentiles are computed relative to these 192 colleges, not all US institutions.
The A / B / C badge reflects how much of a college's named faculty we could match to a research record in that field. A = high match coverage; B = moderate; C = lower — read C-tier scores as directional. A college needs at least four matched faculty in a field to be ranked at all; those below the bar are listed under "too little data to rank."
Research Strength Rankings v1.0 · as of 2026-07-02. Measures research output, not teaching quality.
College Monte Carlo simulates the entire admissions cycle — your real high school, your real college list, thousands of simulated competitors — to estimate admit odds, cost, and outcomes together.
Sign Up