A new nationwide ranking of universities landed UNC top honors in its region.

The university is the top large university in the southern United States, according to the 2021 Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings. The recently released list has UNC ranked ahead of University of Virginia and University of Miami in the category, which includes schools with more than 10,000 undergraduate students.

The newspapers’ ranking also listed UNC as the third best public university in the country and 33rd best overall, maintaining the Chapel Hill school’s positions from the previous edition of the list. Ranking, according to the Wall Street Journal/Times, is determined by 15 factors across four main categories: resources, engagement, outcomes and environment.

“These rankings are a tribute to the faculty and staff who work every day to offer our students the uniquely Carolina programs that provide a high-quality experiential education that is accessible and affordable,” said UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz in a release. “As the nation’s first public university, our mission is to serve the state, nation and world through excellence in teaching, research and service. In fulfilling that mission, we are equipping our students to become future leaders in all that they do.”

The public universities ahead of UNC in the Wall Street Journal/Times rankings are University of Michigan and University of California, Los Angeles. The list’s top five overall universities are Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale, Stanford and Brown.

Down the road from Chapel Hill, Duke University also earned recognition from the Wall Street Journal/Times, as it was named  the southern region’s top midsized school.

In September, The U.S. News & World Report ranked UNC fifth in their list of top public schools among national universities. Previously, Microsoft Academic recognized UNC by naming it the highest-rated university in the country for coronavirus research.

The full, overall 2021 Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings can be found here.

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