Harvard, Princeton tied as best in U.S.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- Harvard and Princeton universities sit side by side atop the U.S. News & World Report ranking of America's Best Colleges released Thursday.

Among liberal arts colleges, Williams College and Amherst College ranked 1-2 in the news magazine's annual ranking.

Harvard, in Cambridge, Mass., held on to a share of the top spot, in part, because of its revised financial aid awards to help U.S. and international students offset the school's $52,000-a-year costs.

Princeton garnered its share of the No. 1 spot based partially in a new initiative, the magazine said. This fall, 20 freshmen at the New Jersey school will spend their first year of college overseas doing community service work to see how "gap years" -- time off between high school and college when students either travel and work -- should be integrated into the university's program of study.

The U.S. News & World Report rankings measure up to 15 indicators of academic performance for each college and university, including graduation and retention rates, financial resources and alumni giving, as well as a peer assessment survey in which a school's top officials rate other colleges in their category.

Rounding out the Top 10 rankings in the national universities category were Yale, 3; California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania, tied at 4; Columbia University and University of Chicago, tied at 8; and Duke University, 10.