Willamette University ranks first in the Northwest and No. 86 nationally among Best Value Schools in its first-ever appearance in U.S. News & World Report’s National University category, according to the 2027 rankings released today. Willamette also placed No. 99 among private national universities and No. 208 overall on a list that includes every Ivy League institution, the country's flagship public research universities, and hundreds of institutions many times its size.
Willamette is the only institution in the country to move from the National Liberal Arts College list to the National University list this year, a change driven by U.S. News's adoption of the American Council on Education's 2025 Carnegie Classification framework.
“It’s remarkable that in our very first year competing against the largest and most resourced universities in America, we're in the top 100 for value. That says something about what a Willamette education delivers,” said Steve Thorsett, president of Willamette University.
The Best Value ranking weighs academic quality against the net cost students actually pay after grants and scholarships. That commitment to access was underscored earlier this month, when Willamette announced it will offer tuition-free education for Oregon students from families earning $80,000 or less.
Willamette debuted in the very first U.S. News rankings in 1983 as the top-ranked regional university in the West, then spent four decades on the National Liberal Arts College list. The move to the National University list reflects fifteen years of deliberate growth and expansion for the oldest university in the western United States. Willamette University currently spans five colleges and schools: Willamette College, its historic residential liberal arts college in Salem; the School of Law, Oregon's first; the Atkinson School of Management, home to the state's top-rated MBA; Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon's flagship art and design school; and the new School of Computing and Information Sciences, which offers the Pacific Northwest's best master's in data science.
Willamette now sits in a category alongside mid-sized universities that share its liberal arts core — the University of Rochester, Case Western Reserve University, William & Mary, Wake Forest University — and regional peers including Gonzaga, Seattle University, and Pacific University. Willamette and Pacific are working together to create the largest and most comprehensive independent university in Oregon.
“Even as we grow and expand, the liberal arts are, and will remain, the heart of a Willamette education,” Thorsett said. “Small classes, faculty who know your name, a close-knit academic community — none of that has changed. What has changed is how much we can now offer on top of it.”
