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Coming in at No. 1, the University of Utah is now the highest-ranked public college in the West, according to the Wall Street Journal’s latest round of rankings of U.S. universities.

Ranked No. 8 among public schools and No. 43 nationally in the College Pulse 2024 Best Colleges earlier this year, the U continues to rise through the upper echelons of rankings.

The new rankings—the WSJ/College Pulse 2024 Best Colleges—focus on three factors:

• Student outcomes: Measures of graduation rates, graduates’ salaries and how those salaries offset the cost of attaining an undergraduate degree at each school.
• Learning environment: Students’ evaluations of their school’s learning facilities and learning opportunities and how well it prepares them for a career, as well as how strongly they would recommend the school.
• The diversity of a school’s students and faculty.

The methodology places the U above the traditional top 10 public universities in the West, including the University of California, Berkeley.