4 Midwestern universities listed among the nation's Top 25 in recent ranking

A recent list ranking the best universities in the United States heading into 2024 showered high honor onto four Midwestern institutions, who were named among the 25 best in the country.

The ranking was released by Niche, a ranking and review site that commonly evaluates school districts, high schools, colleges and universities in the U.S.

While the Midwest was not represented in the nation's top 10, four schools from the region still found their way into the top 25, including two in the Chicago area.

Niche assesses schools on a variety of criteria, including athletics, academics, diversity, campus, value and even the school's party scene.

Evanston's Northwestern University came in at No. 15, with Washington University in St. Louis following at No. 16.

Coming in at No. 21 with the second-highest ranking for a current Big 10 school was University of Michigan, while the University of Chicago in Hyde Park was ranked 23rd in the country.

Several other Midwestern universities still made the cut for the list's top 100, which can be seen below:

• No. 27: University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Ind.
• No. 50: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana and Champaign, Ill.
• No. 59: University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisc.
• No. 62: Macalester College, St. Paul, Minn.
• No. 68: The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
• No. 74: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
• No. 79: Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind.
• No. 81: Carleton College, Northfield, Minn.
• No. 83: Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa
• No. 86: Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.
• No. 94: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.

Below are the overall top 10 universities in the U.S., according to Niche:

• No. 1: Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
• No. 2: Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.
• No. 3: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
• No. 4: Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
• No. 5: Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.
• No. 6: Columbia University, New York, N.Y.
• No. 7: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
• No. 8: Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.
• No. 9: Rice University, Houston, Texas
• No. 10: Brown University, Providence, R.I.