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12 DFW universities land on U.S. News' 2026 list of best colleges

SMU maintained its status as Texas' 5th best university.

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A dozen Dallas-Fort Worth universities have made U.S. News and World Report's just-released list of best schools in the nation for 2026, with Southern Methodist University landing on top in Dallas-Fort Worth.

U.S. News' prestigious Best Colleges rankings annually compare nearly 1,700 U.S. colleges and universities using 17 metrics that measure "academic quality." Schools are ranked nationally, regionally, and by specialty.

SMU maintained its status as the 5th best university in Texas, and it moved up three spots to rank No. 88 nationally after slipping into No. 91 last year. SMU is joined in Texas' top 10 by Texas Christian University in Fort Worth (No. 6) and The University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson (No. 7).

SMU has a 63 percent acceptance rate, and students pay $69,722 yearly for in-state tuition and fees, according to the school's profile.

Iron Skillet heartbreaker aside, this has proven to be a great year for the Mustangs. The university's exceptional graduate programs constantly land atop U.S. News' separate rankings of best grad schools, and its alumni reportedly experience notable long-term career success.

Forbes named SMU among its top universities for 2025, and the school also earned acclaim on The Princeton Review's "hall of fame" list of the best U.S. colleges for 2026.

Other top universities in Dallas-Fort Worth
Texas Christian University was the only other DFW school to rank among the overall top 100 best universities in the country for 2026. It retained its No. 6 spot in Texas for another consecutive year, and it tied for No. 97 in the national rankings after falling to No. 105 last year.

In-state tuition and fees add up to $63,590 a year for TCU students, U.S. News says, and the public university's competitive acceptance rate is only 44 percent. Students benefit from having a 14:1 student-faculty ratio, and 39 percent of classes have fewer than 20 students.

The five other Dallas-Fort Worth schools that ranked among U.S. News' national list include:

No. 110 – The University of Texas at Dallas (tied)
No. 208 – University of North Texas (tied)
No. 222 – The University of Texas at Arlington (tied)
No. 329 – Texas Woman's University (tied)
No. 384 – Dallas Baptist University (tied)

Southwestern Adventist University in Keene, a town located less than 30 miles south of Fort Worth, tied for No. 17 in U.S. News' regional ranking of Best Colleges in the West for 2026.

In the regional ranking of Best Universities in the West, four Dallas-Fort Worth schools made the cut: University of Dallas (No. 9), The University of North Texas at Dallas (No. 41), Parker University (No. 46), and Waxahachie's Nelson University (No. 81), formerly known as Southwestern Assemblies of God University.

U.S. News' top 10 best colleges in Texas for 2026 are:

No. 1 – Rice University, Houston
No. 2 – University of Texas at Austin
No. 3 – Texas A&M University, College Station
No. 4 – Baylor University, Waco
No. 5 – Southern Methodist University, Dallas
No. 6 – Texas Christian University, Fort Worth
No. 7 – The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson
No. 8 – University of Houston
No. 9 – Texas Tech University, Lubbock
No. 10 – University of St. Thomas, Houston

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Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

You have a better chance of landing a job in Texas than in most other states.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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