Rutgers aspires to be the national model for outstanding academic programs, social mobility, and educational equity with purposeful and timely degree completion, career preparation, and lifelong learning.
Rutgers University–New Brunswick is one of the nation’s top 20 public universities, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2022-2023 Best Colleges rankings released on September 12, 2022.
Named #19 of Top Public Schools, Rutgers–New Brunswick climbed higher in the rankings from #23 last year. Rutgers University–Newark (#53) and Rutgers University–Camden (#61) also moved higher among the top 100 public universities.
“Building on Rutgers’ academic excellence and supporting our first-rate faculty, transforming the lives of our remarkable students, and cultivating innovations that improve the world we live in are reflected in the new rankings,” said Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway.
Salamishah Tillet, a Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University–Newark, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in criticism for her essays on race in arts and culture. The Pulitzer judges cited Tillet “for learned and stylish writing about Black stories in art and popular culture–work that successfully bridges academic and nonacademic critical discourse.”
A contributing critic-at-large for The New York Times since 2015, Tillet’s work covers popular culture, gender, sexuality, race and politics as they play out in both popular entertainment and high art, from Netflix series to museum exhibitions.
“I really wanted to pay attention to the ways in which culture and art can both be an indicator of change and also perhaps an alternative to the problems that we have today,” Tillet said. “Most of my work over the last year was looking at how Broadway or television or films or photographs have explored this loss but also offered us solace, and particularly the role of Black artists as a way of understanding how to get through what is really a traumatic and profound moment for our nation.”
But it's more than just numbers.
Behind the rankings are students, faculty, and alumni with stories to share about what drives them to advance the human condition.
Rutgers University–New Brunswick historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar served as co-executive producer on the HBO period drama The Gilded Age. Her work ensured the composite and real-life characters in the series, such as Black journalist T. Thomas Fortune, ring true on screen.
School of Criminal Justice alumna Nancy La Vigne is a widely recognized criminal justice policy expert appointed by President Joe Biden to direct the National Institute of Justice, which works to reduce crime, assist victims, and advance racial equity in the administration of justice.
The Sheryl Lanman Nichols Memorial Fellowship supports master of social work students as they complete a yearlong internship in domestic violence counseling. Recipients are in the School of Social Work’s Violence Against Women and Children certificate program.
More than 40 Rutgers graduate programs across a wide range of disciplines rank among the nation’s top 25 in U.S. News & World Report rankings—just the kind of excellence one would expect of a leading, comprehensive research university.
Historians Judith Surkis and Yesenia Barragan are known for research that challenges our understanding of race, slavery, and the lingering legacy of colonialism. These two faculty members recently received National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships that will allow them to expand their research and publish books on their respective subjects.
Rutgers Law School faculty and students developed the Stop Evicting Newark Project to provide pro bono aid to local residents facing eviction by helping them navigate complicated legal processes and court proceedings.
Internationally recognized physicist and Rutgers alumnus Vitaly Podzorov runs a research group that studies the physics of novel semiconductors. The research aims to quantitatively describe the optical and electronic properties of emergent materials and create better semiconductor devices, such as novel transistors and solar cells. Podzorov is the Donald H. Jacobs Chair in Applied Physics and a professor at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
First-generation college student Jesse Cabrera helped his struggling family during COVID and served as a mentor to other students. It was a lot to juggle, but by taking advantage of the university resources at his disposal and having determination, grit, and resolve, Cabrera graduated in 2022 with a doctorate in pharmacy.
Rutgers–Newark Distinguished Professor John Keene won the National Book Award for Poetry for his latest collection of poems, Punks: New & Selected Poems.
Keene, chair of Rutgers–Newark’s Africana Studies department and also teaches in the English department and MFA Creative Writing Program, has received wide acclaim for the volume, which won the Lambda Literary award and the Thom Gunn Prize for Gay Poetry earlier this year. In 2018, Keene received a MacArthur "Genius" Grant for challenging and expanding our views on American history.
Dean Linda Flynn is one of only five nurses nationwide to receive the National League for Nursing’s Nurse Educator of the Year Award for her unique contributions to nursing education, research, practice, policymaking and public health.
As dean, Flynn heads one of the largest, most highly-ranked nursing schools in the country. The NLN award is among a growing list of honors recognizing her leadership in the field and her commitment to advancing advancing health outcomes in the U.S. and abroad, and building diversity, equity, and inclusion in nursing and health care.
Rutgers makes a world-class education accessible and affordable. All eligible New Jersey students can attend Rutgers tuition-free for four years through a combination of university, federal and state financial aid programs.
Our R-UN to the Top, Bridging the Gap, and Scarlet Guarantee programs build on existing state and federal aid programs to enable in-state students with family incomes below $65,000 to attend the university tuition-free and to reduce tuition and fees for students with family incomes below $100,000.
U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report