Do Boricua College, Bluefield State University, Elizabeth City State University, and Mississippi University for Women sound familiar to you?

They are all part of Washington Monthly’s list of the best 25 colleges and universities in 2025.

Over the past two decades, Washington Monthly has published rankings with the intent of avoiding what the most prestigious rankings seek to reward: an institution’s wealth, prestige, and exclusivity. This tendency causes most lists to include the same top 10 or 20 elite universities, most of which are private.

For example, when the U.S. News & World Report published its 2026 college rankings last month, the results were predictable. Ivy League schools such as Princeton and Harvard remained in their top five, with administrators obsessively following and

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