F&M Stories

Wall Street Journal Recognizes Franklin & Marshall for Student Outcomes and Learning Opportunities

F&M was ranked among the best colleges in the U.S. by the Wall Street Journal-College Pulse, which rates 584 eligible universities in the country on how well colleges set graduates up for financial success.  

Among peer liberal arts colleges, F&M was ranked 16th highest.1 For nearly 240 years, F&M has embraced the power of the liberal arts, and today’s graduates launch into purpose-driven careers through a personalized liberal arts education that pairs deep faculty mentorship with real-world experiences. F&M graduates have a strong foundation of valuable skills widely desired by today’s top employers in a rapidly changing labor market, including analytical and creative thinking; resilience and adaptability; persuasive and consensus-building leadership; and emotional intelligence. 
 
Among peer liberal arts colleges recognized for research, F&M was ranked 11th highest.2 Only 44 liberal arts colleges, including F&M, recently earned Carnegie’s “Research Colleges and Universities” designation, reinforcing the College’s excellence in providing its undergraduate students opportunities to work side-by-side with professors on impactful research. 

An F&M education ranks among the best investments a family can make in terms of reputation and value, according to the experts. Here is where F&M landed on some prestigious lists of top colleges in 2025: Wall Street Journal #16 Top Liberal Arts Colleges in the U.S. #11 Best Liberal Arts Colleges for research. U.S. News & World Report #33 Best Undergraduate Teaching. Princeton Review Best Value College* #24 Most Accessible Professors Best 391 Colleges* * The Review publishes an overall list of colleges that meet this criteria rather than ranking institutions numerically

These accolades build on the momentum of earlier successes in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. F&M was recently ranked 35th among all national liberal arts colleges, and the College’s three-year range in U.S. News is its strongest in more than 20 years. U.S. News also ranked F&M 33rd nationally for best undergraduate teaching, and the College has been highlighted as a best value institution by both U.S. News and the Princeton Review. The latter also recently ranked F&M 24th nationally for most accessible professors.

“Franklin & Marshall has long been nationally recognized for its excellence in liberal arts education,” F&M President Andrew Rich said. “This fall’s rankings reinforce that excellence. We at F&M are proud of our history of building leaders at every level, ready to take their place as tomorrow’s global citizens who shape our world.”

1 F&M defines peer liberal arts colleges as those institutions designated by the 2025 Carnegie Classifications as “Special Focus: Arts and Sciences.”

2 F&M defines peer liberal arts colleges recognized for research as those institutions that received dual designations by the 2025 Carnegie Classification as both “Special Focus: Arts and Sciences” and “Research Colleges and Universities.”

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