Updated as of 6:45 p.m. on Sept. 24 to include comment from Provost Rebecca Kohn.
Elon placed 121st — climbing 12 places from last year’s 133rd ranking in the U.S. News and World Report 2025 national university ranking, released Tuesday, Sept. 24.
Elon was also notably named No. 1 in undergraduate teaching for the fourth consecutive year and also topped the charts this year for learning communities and first-year experiences.
Provost Rebecca Kohn said she is proud Elon has been able to maintain that ranking as teaching is one of Elon’s foundations for everything it does.
“We make that really clear when we're interviewing faculty and hiring them and supporting them while they're here with different resources to make sure they can focus on teaching as their main priority,” Kohn said.
Elon ranked No. 84 in national universities in 2019 and has since dropped below the top 100 due to a change in ranking criteria, according to previous Elon News Network coverage.
The new criteria adds more weight to need-based Pell Grants, retention, first-generation graduates and how much graduates make compared to those who did not attend higher education.
Elon has been working intentionally to improve its number of Pell Grant recipients by increasing scholarship availability for low-income students, Kohn said.
In the 2022-23 school year, 9% of Elon freshmen and 9% of Elon’s undergraduate students were Pell Grant recipients, according to data from the Nation Center for Education Statistics. Nationwide, 34% of undergraduate students receive a Pell Grant. In 2020, Elon’s share of grant recipients was the 9th lowest in the country. Now, the incoming class is 14% Pell Grant recipients, Kohn said.
“We've actively been working to increase that number,” Kohn said.
Another factor Kohn said is helping to improve Elon’s ranking is its focus on retention and graduation rates. Elon’s four-year graduation rate was 78%, according to its website.
Elon also continues to rank low in social mobility. Having placed 345th out of 433, the social mobility category measures how well schools graduate economically disadvantaged students.
This is also an area Elon is working to specifically improve upon, leading to an increase by 59 spots, Kohn said. Along with increasing the number of Pell Grant recipients, Elon is helping to improve this ranking by adding more scholarships to make tuition more affordable for lower income students, she said.
Further, Elon ranked No. 2 in study abroad, service learning and senior capstone — while also ranking in the top 15 for most innovative schools, undergraduate research / creative projects, internships and writing in the disciplines.
Elon’s No. 2 ranking in senior capstone was something Kohn said she specifically was happy to see.
“There definitely are a lot of students and faculty and staff members really dedicated to that space,” Kohn said. “Sometimes it's harder to move the higher up you get. So a three to a two is really meaningful in that space.”
Elon also ranked No. 1 for first year experiences and for Living Learning Communities. Kohn said Elon’s strong and long history of collaboration between academics and student life is what is helping it maintain high rankings for these programs.
“Those rankings are from our peers who are looking at us as an institution and different representatives of our peer institutions are asked to rank others, and so it's our peers recognizing how high we are,” Kohn said.
Kohn said an important part of the overall national rankings is peers' perception — which is helping Elon’s rankings.
“They're remembering that sense of who we are, and that's contributing to our ranking,” Kohn said.