Beating out schools such as Princeton and MIT, BYU landed the top spot in the 2025 WSJ/College Pulse Best College rankings for colleges most highly recommended by students and recent alums. The ranking assessed the extent to which students would recommend BYU to a friend and whether they would choose BYU again if they could start over.

The ranking also revealed high student and alum satisfaction with the value for their money. Because BYU is one of the most affordable universities in the nation, alums are able to go wherever their faith and talents lead them.

The new top ranking from the Wall Street Journal nicely complements a different top ranking from Forbes: BYU is America’s No. 1 financially strongest school. The ranking, which published in August, awarded BYU an A+ Financial Grade.

“Selecting a financially sound school is more important than ever,” the article reported, referencing the long-forecasted demographic drop in high school grads in the years to come. BYU tied with the University of Pennsylvania for the top spot and beat out Cornell, Yale, Stanford and Duke among the top 15.

Meanwhile, a slew of new rankings from the Princeton Review also rank BYU favorably, but none higher than the No. 1 ranking for best college library in all the land. In other new WSJ rankings, BYU landed No. 31 for best salaries among grads and No. 33 for overall best value.

Here’s a sampling of several new rankings for BYU this fall, listed by rank, category and outlet:

• No. 1: Best financially healthy schools, Forbes.
• No. 1: Highly recommend by students/alums, Wall Street Journal.
• No. 1: Best college library, Princeton Review.
• No. 20: Affordable schools for international students, U.S. News.
• No. 25: Best value colleges, Princeton Review.
• No. 31: Best salaries for grads, Wall Street Journal.
• No. 33: Best value, Wall Street Journal.
• No. 36: Best overall college, Forbes.
• No. 39 Best overall college, Washington Monthly.

Todd Hollingshead is the media relations manager for University Communications at BYU.