South Florida universities make big gains in U.S. News' annual college rankings

South Florida’s three major universities surged this year in U.S. News and World Report’s annual rankings of the country’s best national universities.

The University of Miami rose four places to 63rd nationwide, while Florida International University and Florida Atlantic University rocketed 20 or more spots each, to 98th and 189th place, respectively.

Meanwhile, Florida’s two highest-ranked schools, the University of Florida and Florida State University, dropped slightly in the rankings, which were publicly released Tuesday. UF fell two spots to 30th, while FSU dropped one place to 54th.

The top-ranked university? Just like last year, it’s Princeton University.

It was the second straight year of major improvements for Boca Raton’s FAU, which last year shot up 53 spots.

The progress for South Florida’s most prominent universities came in the second year of annual rankings since U.S. News revamped its methodology to put more emphasis on schools’ ability to produce “social mobility and outcomes for graduating college students.”

“More than half of a school's rank is again made up of outcome measures related to how successful an institution is at enrolling and graduating students from different backgrounds with manageable debt and postgraduation success,” the magazine said in a statement.

In addition to breaking into the top 100 national universities, FIU earned another distinction this year: U.S. News named it the nation’s top school for social mobility.

The magazine describes the social mobility distinction as a way to single out schools that are ”more successful than others at advancing social mobility by enrolling and graduating large proportions of disadvantaged students awarded with Pell Grants.”

You can find U.S. News’ complete “Best Colleges” rankings at https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges.

Florida's top national universities, according to U.S. News & World Report

Here are the 13 Florida schools that made it into the top 300, along with the amount their rating rose or fell:

30. University of Florida (tied), -254. Florida State University (tied), -163. University of Miami (tied), +491. University of South Florida (tied), -298. Florida International University (tied), +26121. University of Central Florida (tied), +3152. Florida A&M University (tied), +18189. Florida Atlantic University (tied), +20231. Florida Institute of Technology (tied), +38231. Nova Southeastern University (tied), -4231. University of North Florida (tied), +5288. Keiser University (tied), -39296. Florida Gulf Coast University (tied), +8

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Andrew Marra is a reporter at The Palm Beach Post. Reach him at amarra@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: FAU, FIU surge in U.S. News 'Best Colleges' rankings