Harvey Mudd in Princeton Review’s Best 391 Colleges for 2026

Harvey Mudd College was named one of the country’s top undergraduate institutions in The Princeton Review’s latest college guide, The Best 391 Colleges for 2026.

The Princeton Review chooses which colleges to include in the guide based on the quality of their educational programs but does not rank the colleges overall. This year, the company’s editors named the top 25 colleges in 50 separate categories, ranging from laboratory facilities to financial aid to campus food. The ranking lists are based on The Princeton Review’s surveys of students currently attending the colleges.

Harvey Mudd’s rankings in The Princeton Review’s Best 391 Colleges 2026 include:

• No. 1 for “Most Accessible Professors”
• No. 2 for “Top 20 Best Value Colleges w/o Aid (Private Schools)”
• No. 2 for “Top 20 Best Career Placement (Private Schools)”
• No. 3 for “Top 20 Best Schools for Making an Impact (Private Schools)”
• No. 4 for “Top 50 Best Value Colleges (Private Schools)”
• No. 15 for “Best Quality of Life”

Harvey Mudd meets 100% of demonstrated financial need for all students, and about 70% of students receive need-based or merit awards or a combination of both.

In The Princeton Review’s profile of Harvey Mudd, the editors write that the College “does a great job at fulfilling its specific niche as a top-tier STEM college with all the support and benefits of a liberal arts college.” Students praise the broad Core Curriculum, which combines “a solid foundation in each of the major STEM areas” with courses in the humanities, social sciences and the arts, fostering graduates who “can rise to meet interdisciplinary challenges within the sciences” and enjoy “great post-grad opportunities.”

Students described Harvey Mudd as having “incredible” professors who “really care about [us] and that we are doing okay in life outside of our courses.” The community is characterized as small and tight knit, where “everyone looks after one another” and “upperclassmen help you on your homework at odd hours in the night.”