What Makes Carleton College Minnesota’s Highest Ranked School For Higher Education

A national financial website has released its annual rankings of the Best Colleges and Universities in the United States. WalletHub used the categories of Student Selectivity, Cost/Financing, Faculty Resources, Campus Safety, Campus Experience, Career Outcomes and Education Outcomes to select the top schools in America.

The top three schools in the country are all located on the east coast- Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University.

“In general, universities tend to rank higher than colleges due to their inclusion of graduate-level programs, greater on-campus opportunities and higher earnings for students post-graduation," said WalletHub's Chip Lupo. "In fact, the top 10 places for higher education in the U.S. are all universities. There are still tons of high-ranking colleges, though, which offer their own advantages like smaller class sizes, more personalized learning and often safer campuses.”

WHAT ARE THE TOP COLLEGES IN MINNESOTA? 

In what would not exactly be considered an upset win, WalletHub ranked Northfield's Carleton College the top college/university in Minnesota. Carleton finished at the top of the Admission Rate, Student-Faculty Ratio, Gender/Racial Diversity and Graduation Rate percentiles and also finished highly in Post-Attendance Median Salary.

St. Paul's Macalester College finished as the second-best school in Minnesota, buoyed by high scores in Admission Rate, Diversity, Graduation Rate and Student-Faculty Ratio.

Rounding out the top ten Colleges and Universities in Minnesota per WalletHub were St. Olaf College, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Bethany Lutheran College, University of St. Thomas, College of St. Benedict, St. John's University, St. Catherine University and the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

CENTRAL MINNESOTA SCHOOLS RANKED 

The College of St. Benedict finished 442nd nationally and 113th in the Midwest, St. John's University 446th overall and 116th in the Midwest, and St. Cloud State University finished 163rd in the Midwest and out of the top 500 nationally.