Veritas: Harvard tops on annual list

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 22 (UPI) -- Harvard University, the oldest post-secondary learning institution in the United States, leads this year's U.S. News & World Report list of top colleges.

The Cambridge, Mass., institution topped Ivy League rivals Princeton University and Yale University in the annual undergraduate rankings for national universities, The Boston Globe reported.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Duke University and the University of Chicago completed the national universities category.

The magazine's leading liberal arts colleges were Amherst College, Williams College, Swarthmore College, and Wellesley College while the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Virginia, UCLA and the University of Michigan were the top public universities.

"It's always nice to be recognized in this way," Harvard spokesman Robert Mitchell told the Globe. "However, our admissions officers always tell prospective students that they should select a college that best suits their needs, not by its position in a ranking."

The magazine bases its rankings on several factors, including peer assessments, graduation and retention rates and class sizes.