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Northern Illinois University rates among the nation’s leading institutions of higher education for social mobility, according to the 2025 Wall Street Journal/College Pulse rankings.

The rankings of 500 institutions place NIU at No. 38—the second-highest ranking of any Illinois public school and among the top five universities in the Midwest. (Fifteen of the top 20 schools are in California.)

Colleges at the top of the social-mobility rankings take in high proportions of low-income students and excel at improving those students’ graduation rates and their salaries later in life, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“It’s what we’re all about—matching talent with opportunity and lifting up students and communities,” NIU President Lisa C. Freeman said. “Our faculty and staff work hard every day to empower our students with support, transformational learning experiences and all of the tools they need to succeed in their careers and in life.”

The university has in recent years significantly increased diversity among its scholarship recipients. Test-free admissions and merit scholarship policies help to attract and foster the success of Huskies from all backgrounds. NIU has worked to close gaps in academic achievement and degree attainment for low-income and first-generation students, and to ensure that students are competitive for strong first jobs or graduate education opportunities.

The Journal, working with data scientists at Statista, a global data gathering and visualization firm, says it devised its ranking of the colleges that most help students move up the socioeconomic ladder using research by the Third Way policy-research think tank and the Brookings Institution. The newspaper reported that two key questions are at the heart of its analysis: How much does a college improve its students’ chances of graduating on time? And how much will it improve the salaries those students earn after they graduate?

Colleges that perform well in the ranking also stay accessible to low-income students by keeping tuition costs low. More than a third of NIU undergraduates earn their degrees without debt.

The social-mobility rankings further consider the proportion of students who receive Pell Grants at each college, rewarding colleges that take in a high number of students from families with lower incomes. Pell Grants are federal education grants earmarked for students who have exceptional financial need. One of every two NIU undergraduates is Pell-eligible, and more than 50% of undergraduates are first-generation college students.

NIU holds a strong position on another social mobility college ranking.

CollegeNET is the developer of the Social Mobility Index (SMI), which ranks nearly 1,400 four-year institutions according to how effectively they enroll students from low-income backgrounds and graduate them into promising careers.

In the CollegeNET 2024 ranking, NIU ranks 37th in the country—and first in Illinois among all universities, public and private.