Grinnell College has dropped eight places in the U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of Best National Liberal Arts Colleges in 2025. The report ranked the College nineteenth, whereas last year’s report ranked Grinnell eleventh in the category.
Brad Lindberg, associate vice president of institutional initiatives and enrollment, and Graham Miller, director of strategic research, wrote in a joint email to The S&B that the drop in rankings does not mean Grinnell’s quality as an academic institution has declined. They wrote the drop is attributed to the dip in the College’s six-year graduation rate, which decreased by one percentage point, attributed by the College’s COVID leave policies.
“The College was aware that our generous COVID leave policies would suppress overall graduation rates,” Lindberg and Miller wrote. “Nevertheless, we continue to believe that these policies were good for Grinnell students and will, over the long term, result in more students completing their degrees.”
They also noted the six-year graduation rate for students who received Pell grants dropped by six percentage points. “While the change in the number of Pell-eligible students who did not graduate in six years is very small (8 students in the 2024 data and 12 in the 2025 data),” Lindberg and Miller wrote. “This change had a comparatively large impact on the College’s social mobility ranking.”
In an email exchange with The S&B, Ellen de Graffenreid, vice president of communications and marketing, wrote “changes in ranking may be driven by changes in data that aren’t statistically significant. With all of the top schools so close together in their scores, rankings are going to change from year to year in ways that don’t tell us anything meaningful about how these colleges are similar to or different from each other.” As evidence, she highlighted the fact that the rankings skip from a multi-college tie at fourteenth to a multi-college tie at nineteenth.
Both Lindberg and Miller emphasized that Grinnell continues to be ranked among the top liberal arts colleges in the country. “We continue to perform at the highest level on many of the metrics reported in the U.S. News and World Report, including student debt and student retention,” Lindberg and Miller wrote.
“The College doesn’t engage in any strategies to influence rankings or make decisions based on rankings,” de Graffenreid wrote. “Academic excellence and the student experience – and all of the factors that influence them – drive decision-making, as opposed to rankings.”
“The rankings will not have any effect on the College’s work. At the same time, they do call attention to specific areas where we want to direct attention,” Lindberg and Miller wrote. “We will continue to work hard to support students in ways which assist them with the ultimate goal of graduating from Grinnell.”
