UCLA is the region’s top public school and Caltech the leading private college in the WSJ/THE College Rankings
The University of California, Los Angeles is one of six schools in the University of California system among the top 10 public schools in the West, according to the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings.
UCLA, the highest-ranked public school in the country at No. 25 among all colleges, is followed on the list of leading public colleges in the West by the University of California schools in Berkeley, Davis and San Diego. All three of those schools are also among the top 10 public schools nationwide, as is the University of Washington-Seattle, No. 5 on the list for the West.
Among private schools in the West, the California Institute of Technology, tied for fifth among all colleges nationwide, tops the list, followed by Stanford University and the University of Southern California. Fourth among Western private schools is Pomona College, which is joined on this regional list by three other members of the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of seven undergraduate and graduate schools in Los Angeles County—Claremont McKenna College, Scripps College and Pitzer College.
The WSJ/THE rankings are based on 15 factors across four main categories: Forty percent of each school’s overall score comes from student outcomes, including measures of graduate salaries and debt burdens, 30% from the school’s academic resources, 20% from how well it engages its students and 10% from its diversity.