Two years ago, Johns Hopkins announced its plan to become one of the top 10 colleges in the country. Since then, the university has emphasized undergraduate education and, as a result, has slowly been inching its way up the U.S. News’s annual college rankings, moving from 14th place to 12th place to now, finally, the coveted 10th place spot. Considering that the university was ranked 16th just a few years earlier, that’s quite a jump.
On this year’s ranking, Hopkins ties with CalTech for 10th place, and finally beats out longtime rankings rival (and, ahem, Ivy League member) Dartmouth.
Even more significantly, perhaps, Hopkins moved from 7th place to 3rd place in U.S. News’s annual poll of high school counselors. This poll asks counselors to rank various schools in terms of their undergraduate education, and provides a useful sense of a college’s rising (or falling) star. In 3rd place, Hopkins is tied with Princeton, Stanford, and Yale, and ranks above Brown, Cornell, and–yes–Dartmouth.
The university was clearly happy to have reached its top 10 goal 5 years ahead of time. “What a great moment for our university. It reflects the collective accomplishments and spirit of our entire community—faculty, students, alumni, staff, and leadership,” Jeffrey H. Aronson, chair of the university’s board of trustees, told the Hopkins Hub.
