Here are the best colleges in Massachusetts, according to 2025 rankings from The Wall Street Journal

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The Wall Street Journal said that at Babson, “the emphasis on hands-on experiences begins the moment students step on campus as freshmen.”

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First-year undergrads at Babson are required to take the Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship course, where teams of students are loaned up to $3,000 to launch their own startup.

Trees frame the Graduate School of Business at Bentley University in Waltham.Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe

“It is not a simulation,” Ethan Ide, a junior at Babson, told the WSJ. “You’re working with international suppliers, and you have a website, and you’re selling to people across the globe. Getting that hands-on experience from day one was kind of insane.”

To calculate the rankings the Wall Street Journal teamed up with College Pulse, an online survey and analytics company founded by two Dartmouth College alumni. They also consulted with data scientists at Statista.

The ranking scores were based on the following components, each carrying a different weight. Student outcomes (salary impact, years to pay off net price, graduation rate); learning environment (learning opportunities, career preparation, learning facilities, the extent that students would recommend their college, and character) and diversity (opportunities to interact with students from different backgrounds, ethnic diversity, inclusion of students with disabilities and lower family earnings).

Here’s how they ranked top 20 colleges and universities in Massachusetts. The top 20 overall in the country are also listed below.

20 best colleges and universities in Massachusetts, according to WSJ

2. Babson College

6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

7. Harvard University

11. Bentley University

65. College of the Holy Cross

86. Wellesley College

90. Worcester Polytechnic Institute

100. Boston College

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120. Amherst College

168. Northeastern University

171. Boston University

172. Wentworth Institute of Technology

173. Stonehill College

174. Williams College

205. Simmons University

246. Suffolk University

281. University of Massachusetts Amherst

282. Tufts University

313. University of Massachusetts Lowell

331. University of Massachusetts Boston

20 Best colleges and universities in the United States

1. Princeton University

2. Babson College

3. Stanford University

4. Yale University

5. Claremont McKenna College

6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

7. Harvard University

8. University of California, Berkeley

9. Georgia Institute of Technology, Main Campus

10. Davidson College

11. Bentley University

12. University of California, Davis

13. University of Pennsylvania

14. Columbia University

15. Lehigh University

16. San José State University

17. University of Notre Dame

18. University of California, Merced

19. Virginia Tech

20. Harvey Mudd College


Emily Sweeney can be reached at emily.sweeney@globe.com. Follow her @emilysweeney and on Instagram @emilysweeney22.