From Washington Monthly:
Since 2005, the Washington Monthly has ranked colleges based on what they do for the country. It’s our answer to U.S News & World Report, which relies on crude and easily manipulated measures of wealth, exclusivity, and prestige." We rank national universities—four-year institutions that award a significant number of doctoral degrees—based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: social mobility, research, and promoting public service.
Additional rankings note: USNWR will be changing their test-score metric weight due to the test-optional drive among undergraduate schools. While we have heard two rumors on how they will do so, it is premature to say anything with certainty other than this change could lead to movement in the rankings beyond what we usually see.
You can see Washington Monthly's full, detailed methodology here. The top 50 are below:
(1) Stanford University
(2) Harvard University
(3) Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(4) Yale University
(5) Princeton University
(6) Duke University
(7) University of Pennsylvania
(8) Georgetown University
(9) University of California—San Diego
(10) Utah State University
(11) University of California—Los Angeles
(12) Texas A&M University—College Station
(13) University of California—Davis
(14) Columbia University in the City of New York
(15) University of Florida
(16) University of Washington—Seattle
(17) University of California—Berkeley
(18) University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign
(19) University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill
(20) University of California—Santa Barbara
(21) University of Wisconsin—Madison
(22) University of California—Irvine
(23) University of Notre Dame
(24) University of Chicago
(25) Cornell University
(26) California State University—Fresno
(27) University of California—Riverside
(28) University of Virginia
(29) University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
(30) Northwestern University
(31) National Louis University
(32) Brigham Young University
(33) Dartmouth College
(34) Mary Baldwin University
(35) Florida International University
(36) Rutgers University—Newark
(37) Brown University
(38) Tufts University
(39) Purdue University
(40) Syracuse University
(41) Vanderbilt University
(42) Virginia Tech
(43) College of William & Mary
(44) George Washington University
(45) Michigan State University
(46) SUNY at Albany
(47) University of Illinois at Chicago
(48) Washington State University
(49) Iowa State University
(50) University of Maryland—College Park