The University of California, Irvine has been ranked 9th among the nation’s public universities, making it an impressive 11 consecutive years in which the campus has placed in the top 10 in U.S. News & World Report’s list of “Best Colleges.” The campus was rated 32nd in the 2025-26 roundup of all U.S. universities, marking its highest placement ever in the U.S. News rankings.

In addition, UC Irvine once again ranked No. 13 overall in the subcategory of social mobility, which appraises institutions that enroll and graduate large proportions of students awarded federal Pell Grants – given to undergraduates who display exceptional financial need. Historically, the campus is among the best in the U.S. for the graduation rate of its Pell Grant recipients.

UC Irvine was also lauded for supporting its students who served in the military, placing 16th nationally for best college for veterans.

U.S. News & World Report also evaluated two undergraduate programs in the School of Social Sciences this year, both of which landed in the nation’s top 15 among public universities:

• Economics, tied for 13th among publics, tied for 39th overall
• Psychology, tied for 10th among publics, tied for 26th overall (program is administered by both the Department of Cognitive Sciences in Social Sciences and the Department of Psychology in Social Ecology)

“It's gratifying to see that the investments we have made in economics and cognitive sciences, despite budgetary challenges, are paying off in terms of research productivity and program visibility,” says Bill Maurer, UC Irvine social sciences dean. “Not only are these departments offering some of the campus's most popular majors, they are research powerhouses, doing far-reaching and field defining research that advances the whole campus.”

The U.S. News & World Report rankings – now in their 41^st year – assess the country’s bachelor’s degree-granting institutions on more than a dozen measures of academic quality. Available online at www.usnews.com/colleges, these results come on the heels of UC Irvine achieving remarkable rankings by other respected journals. For more about these, see https://uci.edu/about/rankings.php.

-adapted from UCI web story