best HBCUs college choice

Ranking: The 50 best HBCUs


College Choice releases its 2017 ranking of the 50 Best Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

College Choice, an authority in college and university rankings and resources, has published a ranking of the 50 Best Historically Black Colleges and Universities for 2017.

Many HBCU schools are celebrating over 100 years of existence. Attention to community, spirituality, African-American studies, tradition, and social justice drive and distinguish HBCUs. They have also been featured in the news over the past few months due to comments from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as well as a meeting between President Trump and a group of HBCU presidents.

“There are over 100 HBCUs in the United States, and they have had an outsized influence on the entire country,” Christian Amondson, managing editor of College Choice, said of the ranking in a statement. “Luminaries like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. all attended HBCUs. But it’s not by sticking only to an elite group that HBCUs have produced such amazing thinkers and leaders. In fact, half of all HBCUs have a freshman class with three-quarters of their students from low-income backgrounds.”

College Choice developed its list by looking at traditional metrics of institutional excellence such as student-to-faculty ratio, incoming student test scores, and regional accreditation according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and U.S. News & World Report.

College Choice also incorporated data on return on investment (ROI), or the difference between tuition costs and expected early career salary, found on Payscale.

For the full results and methodology, click here.

The 50 Best HBCUs

The ranking for the 50 Best Historically Black Colleges and Universities finds Howard University in the top spot. Spelman College is in second, and Hampton University rounds out the top three.

(Next page: The complete top 50 HBCUs)

The entire ranking, listed in alphabetical order, is as follows:

  • Alabama A & M University
  • Alabama State University
  • Albany State University
  • Alcorn State University
  • Bluefield State College
  • Bowie State University
  • Claflin University
  • Concordia College Alabama
  • Coppin State University
  • Delaware State University
  • Dillard University
  • Edward Waters College
  • Elizabeth City State University
  • Fayetteville State University
  • Fisk University
  • Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
  • Fort Valley State University
  • Grambling State University
  • Hampton University
  • Howard University
  • Huston-Tillotson University
  • Jackson State University
  • Johnson C Smith University
  • Kentucky State University
  • Lane College
  • Le Moyne-Owen College
  • Lincoln University of Pennsylvania
  • Mississippi Valley State University
  • Morehouse College
  • Morgan State University
  • Norfolk State University
  • North Carolina A & T State University
  • North Carolina Central University
  • Oakwood University
  • Prairie View A & M University
  • Rust College
  • Southern University and A & M College
  • Southern University at New Orleans
  • Spelman College
  • Stillman College
  • Texas Southern University
  • Tougaloo College
  • Tuskegee University
  • University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff
  • University of Maryland Eastern Shore
  • Virginia State University
  • Virginia Union University
  • West Virginia State University
  • Winston-Salem State University
  • Xavier University of Louisiana

College Choice is an independent online publication dedicated to helping students and their families find the right college. The site publishes rankings and reviews that make finding the best colleges for different interests easier and more fun, as well as resources to help students get into, pay for, and thrive at the college of their choice.

Material from a press release was used in this report.

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