2024 Colleges With the Best Professors

Attending college with outstanding professors can be an exceptionally rewarding decision. Many of today's most successful professionals attribute an enormous amount of their success to their college professors (and even high school professors) that had a profound impact on their careers.

What Makes A Great Professor?

We've created numerous in-depth ranking metrics around academic and professor quality, as can be seen in our detailed methodology pages. The list ranges from how much professors are paid at each school to whether the student to faculty ratios are competitive. Salary in particular can have an outsized impact on how much effort professors exert to deliver an elevated experience to students, so it gets a particularly heavy weight.

Diversity of the professor base is also a critical factor, given that unique ideas blended together typically produce different and improved pathways to think about problems and create solutions - often via non-traditional methods. Of course, another factor is the quantity of research spend that a school dedicates for professors involved in post-secondary research, doctorate programs and even some masters programs. Rather than simply looking at that metric as a gross number, it's also important to calculate the research spend per student, which also carries a significant weight in our scoring.

What Are The Benefits of Having Attending a College With Incredible Professors?

Aside from the obvious reasons, like being spoon-fed knowledge by the best knowledge feeders you can find, there are several significant benefits to seeking out a school filled with exceptional professors. One of which is, there are plenty to go around. Rather than trying to sign up for that "one class" and it being filled the moment scheduling opens, you have a plethora of options of high quality, engaging professors in diverse disciplines. Also, typically the better the professors, the larger the research budget they’re granted, so if you stay in a discipline with many highly-rated and high-achieving professors, chances are high that there will be numerous research and internship opportunities that can really jumpstart your professional career.

What Colleges Have The Best Professors?

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Topping the list of colleges with the best professors is MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The college is very familiar with receiving top marks in most every national poll, and for professors, it's no different. The school accepts just 7% of students, which has actually increased in the last few years (likely due to relaxed admission requirements during covid), but still is highly competitive. The school is home to 12,321 students and also claims the #1 rank for best college overall. Excited prospective students should also keep in mind that with a price tag of nearly $54,000, financial planning needs to be a critical part of the process to enjoy a remarkable education at MIT. The school is located in Boston, in the city of Cambridge, yielding an assortment of activities, professional sports, and recreation right outside the classroom. A few of the more notable professors include Eric Crimson, who was born in Canada and is a renowned computer scientist. Another is Hal Abelson, who studied at both Princeton and MIT, and also works in the computer engineering department. There's also Gerald Susan, in the field of Electrical Engineering that can really deliver on topics such as artificial intelligence and augmented creativity.

Stanford University

Next on the list is Stanford University located in Stanford (located in the heart of California's Silicon Valley). Given the school’s location, it’s a tech recruiting hotbed from companies like Google and Facebook. The college has an impressive acceptance rate of just 4%, and yet, it has managed to attract more than 20,993 students to study. Its overall rank of #2 allows students to thrive with access to the best faculty in many subject matters. Additionally, the tuition is second to MIT's, clocking in at just over $52,000. The university boasts an impressive faculty with professors like John F. Doyle, who has an extensive background in mathematics and mechanical engineering, and follows up with Robert M. Graham and Charles Goldman, the two preeminent computer science professors.

Johns Hopkins University

Claiming the 3rd spot is Johns Hopkins University, located in Baltimore, Maryland. With an acceptance rate of 11%, slightly higher than Stanford, the university still manages to attract just over 33,543 students to the college. The school ranks at number seven nationally overall with a tuition rate of over $55,000. Professor-wise, the school is home to Robert J. Farley, who specializes in Physics and Applied Math, James J. Benedict for political science and contemporary social studies, and lastly, Yimin Wang for neurology and human pathology.

California Institute of Technology

Coming in 4th, from the pacific coast, is California Institute of Technology located in Pasadena California. They have an even more exclusive acceptance rate at 6%, and tend to provide a much more intimate learning experience than many on this ranking, as the student body totals just 2,334 students. The college ranks at #19 nationally overall, providing students with a better education than most. Faculty-wise, the university has Lia Merminga, who specializes in Chemical Engineering and Applied Mathematics, Cleve Arrington and David Canter for generalized biology, and lastly Dr. Micah Allen who specializes in Computational Evolutionary Genetics.

Princeton University

To round out the top 5 is Princeton University located in Princeton, New Jersey. It also has a competitive acceptance rate of 6%, which has led to 8,720 students, and the school also landed as the #5 best overall college in America on the latest Authority rankings. In regards to tuition, the college clocks in at just over $51,000 yearly, and shifting gears to professors, the school is home to some of the most formidable academics. Notable faculty include professor Guy Smith who works in the history of mathematics, professor Greg Goldstone who works in interdisciplinary astronomical studies, and lastly professor Elizabeth Edwards who specializes in the Medieval Cultural and Literary Studies.

How To Find The Right College For You?

One item we didn’t cover that is absolutely critical to your decision, should be student feedback and student ratings. These should have a large impact on your decision, so it's important to not just evaluate professors based on their academic achievements, but on their actual ratings from real-life students. Find a way to speak to counselors, alumni, current students, and even some current professors at whatever schools you’re considering. Otherwise, you run the same risk as heading into a movie rated 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, only to find out later that the 95% was actually the critics rating - while the audience rated it just 50%. That can make for a long time in the theater, or a very, very long time in an undesirable classroom - so it's important to do your due diligence regarding your target schools professors.