UC Riverside is the No. 36 public university in a 2026-27 college ranking from Forbes magazine.
UCR is No. 97 overall among public and private universities on Forbes Top Colleges list.
Fall is college rankings season, with leading publications focused on varying measures of what constitutes higher education success. For Forbes, outcomes — graduates’ salaries, debt, and ROI — is the most important consideration.
Forbes evaluated 2,600 four-year universities and colleges in the U.S. using data from two federal education databases: the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard.
For the first time this year, Forbes used post-graduation earnings data from People Data Labs, a private research company. Other data came from Third Way, a public policy think tank; the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, and original Forbes research on leadership, major awards, academic achievement, and other measures of post-graduate success.
This past year, UCR was ranked by Forbes No. 27 among publics and No. 77 overall.
On August 30, UC Riverside was ranked No. 30 among public research universities in Washington Monthly’s America’s Best Colleges for Research list. On September 22, U.S. News & World Report will release its college rankings. For five of the past seven years, UCR has ranked No. 1 among publics and privates in the U.S. News standalone category of social mobility.
