What are some highly-rated universities in the United States according to experts?

According to U.S. News and World Report, the top five universities in the United States are Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Stanford as of 2015. University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, and the California Institute of Technology round out the magazine's top 10.

The methodology used to compare universities covers several categories of academic excellence indicators. Some indicators include assessment by outside administrators, faculty resources, class size, composite SAT and ACT scores of accepted students, percentage of enrolled students in the top 10 percent of their high school class, and the ratio of admitted students to applicants.