Belmont Moves Up in National Rankings

The Bell Tower taken from the North Lawn, Emily Garver

Belmont University was ranked No. 213 on the U.S. News Best National Universities Rankings list for 2026.  

It rose seven spots since being ranked #220 last year. Belmont is also ranked #86 on the Best Value School list. 

Despite rising seven spots in the U.S. News Best National Universities Rankings, Belmont officials say numbers don’t tell the full story. University leaders argue that the true measure of Belmont’s success lies in its people, mission, and community—qualities that can’t be captured by statistics alone. 

“It's really hard to rank different schools because different schools have different niches and are specialized in different things,” Belmont student Amina Fiks said. 

Several factors impact U.S. News’ calculations, including graduation rates, peer assessments, and graduate salaries. However, the methods may not be reliable, some university officials said.  

“We have some questions and some potential concerns about the methodologies that they use and how the rankings come out,” said James McIntyre, dean of the College of Education. "It gives you some information, but it doesn't give you the most important information about our institution,” McIntyre said. 

McIntyre and Provost David Gregory agreed that assessing the people, the culture, and the mission of a university is more important than numbers.  

“Rankings don't really measure what kind of person our students are, and our alumni are,” McIntyre said. “They're people of character; they're people of virtue who are doing important work with excellence in the workplace… that's a big part of who we are and what we aspire to.”  

McIntyre and Gregory agreed that rankings can’t measure how seriously Belmont takes its mission of forming leaders of character, wisdom and purpose. They emphasized that instead of just looking at rankings, prospective students should visit campus and interact with its people. 

“Coming to Belmont for a preview day, or connecting with our faculty, or connecting with our Bruin Recruiter students, it's special... that's a much better, more authentic look at who we are as a university,” McIntyre said. 

Belmont will try to continue to rise in the rankings, said Gregory. However, Belmont is more focused on its values— striving to fulfill the school’s mission and to serve the students. 

“We're never really going to focus totally on rankings. We're going to focus on the success of you, the students,” Gregory said. 

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This article was written by Olivia Abernathy