CCNY remains one of the top schools in the nation, according to The Princeton Review®.
The City College of New York is one of the nation's academically best undergraduate institutions according to the education services company The Princeton Review®.
The company profiles CCNY in the 2026 edition of its annual college guide, The Best 391 Colleges (Penguin Random House) and its website feature about the project.
Only about 15% of America’s nearly 2,400 four-year colleges are included in The Princeton Review guidebook. The company chose the colleges for the book based on its surveys of 2,000 college administrators about their institutions’ academic offerings. The company also surveyed students attending the colleges in the book who rated their own schools on dozens of topics and reported on their campus experiences at them.
In The Princeton Review profile on CCNY, the company's editors praise the school for its “quality and challenging education” and quote students they surveyed for the project who described the college as “rigorous,” offering a broad curriculum, and boasting an engineering school that is “one of the best public schools.”
"The City College has outstanding academic programs and the feedback we received from its students we surveyed was very impressive," said Rob Franek, The Princeton Review's Editor-in-Chief and lead author of The Best 391 Colleges. "We are delighted to name City College one of our Best Colleges for 2026 and to recommend it to students searching for their ‘best-fit’ college,”
The Princeton Review does not rank the schools in The Best 391 Colleges hierarchically from 1 to 391.
The Best 391 Colleges has 50 categories of ranking lists: each list names the top 25 schools (of those in the book) in a particular category. The rankings are entirely based on the company's surveys of students attending the 391 profiled schools. Surveys of 170,000 students (about 435 per school on average) were tallied for the rankings in The Best 391 Colleges.
CCNY appears on the following ranking lists in The Best 391 Colleges:
- Best Value Colleges
- Best Northeast
- Green Colleges
- The Best 391 Colleges, and
- Top 20 Best Schools for Making an Impact (Public Schools) at #13.
Information on the methodology for the rankings and the student survey is on The Princeton Review’s website here.
The Princeton Review tallies rating scores (from 60 to 99) for the schools in The Best 391 Colleges in eight categories. The ratings are primarily based on institutional survey data. A few rating scores also factor in student survey data. The rating scores are published in the profiles of the schools in the book as well as in the website profiles.
CCNY received the following rating scores in these categories:
- Academics -- 75/99;
- Admissions Selectivity -- 81/99;
- Financial Aid -- 84/99;
- Fire Safety -- 90/99;
- Quality of Life -- 84/99;
- Green -- 81/99;
- ROI – 88/99;
- Professors Interesting -- 83/99; and
- Professors Accessible -- 86/99.
Information on The Princeton Review college ratings may be found here. Details about The Princeton Review Best Colleges for 2026 project—the school names, profiles, ranking lists, and rating scores—are posted on PrincetonReview.com.
The Best 391 Colleges is one of more than 150 Princeton Review books in a line published by Penguin Random House. The book and its annual rankings have been featured on NBC TODAY more than two dozen times over the years and referenced by media from NPR to The Wall Street Journal and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Princeton Review (www.PrincetonReview.com), founded in 1981, is an education services company known for its tutoring, test-prep, admission services, school rankings, books, and other resources. Headquartered in New York, NY, it is not affiliated with Princeton University, and it is not a magazine.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.2 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers, and society. At City College, more than 16,500 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity, and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together,” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College's mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic, and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Jay Mwamba
917.892.0374
jmwamba@ccny.cuny.edu