U.S. News & World Report ranks Cal State Fullerton as a No. 7 top performer on social mobility out of more than 430 national universities listed in its 2025 Best Colleges rankings.
The Top Performers on Social Mobility list assesses schools’ graduation rates of economically disadvantaged students. The ranking factors for this national universities category this year were based on the graduation rates and graduation performance of Pell Grant-awarded students.
Out of CSUF’s 36,508 undergraduate students in fall 2023, 17,975 — or 49.2% — were Pell Grant recipients.
U.S. News also recognized CSUF and its undergraduate programs in the following categories:
- No. 37 in Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs (non-doctorate)
- No. 69 in Top Public Schools
- No. 114 in Undergraduate Nursing Programs
- No. 136 in National Universities
- No. 147 in Undergraduate Business Programs
- No. 180 in Undergraduate Psychology Programs
- No. 193 in Undergraduate Computer Science Programs
- No. 198 in Undergraduate Economics Programs
- No. 206 in Best Value Schools
The 2025 Best Colleges rankings methodology for national universities evaluated 17 measures of academic quality, like peer assessment, graduation rates and a university’s financial resources per student.
The most significant change from the previous year’s methodology was that U.S. News no longer considered graduation rates of first-generation students in its ranking formulas for national universities, including its top performers on social mobility rankings. The weight formerly attributed to graduation rates of first-generation students was reallocated to graduation rates of Pell Grant recipients.