The 50 best colleges in America

Samantha Lee/Business Insider

What makes a college great? In Business Insider's latest ranking of the best colleges in America, the top schools share a few common traits: They provide a quality education and graduate students on time, they set graduates up to earn well-paying jobs early in their career, and they provide a memorable and enjoyable campus experience that instills pride and loyalty for decades to come.

Business Insider's 2016 ranking uses a formula that relies very little on glamour statistics, like reputation and selectivity, that are featured in many college rankings. Instead, we primarily leaned on data available from the government, weighting early-career earnings and graduation rate the highest.

College years are formative for young adults, so we also gave significant credit to schools that provide a top-notch student-life experience, as measured by Niche, a company that compiles research on schools. Niche assessed the social and community life of universities and provided letter grades based on metrics like campus quality, diversity, party scene, student retention, safety, and athletics.

Other factors that counted for less and rounded out each school's score: full-time retention rate, average annual cost (after accounting for scholarships and financial aid), average SAT score of incoming students, and admittance rate. Read more about our methodology.

The Ivy League dominated the list, taking the top three spots. But our top 10 featured a couple of surprises, too, including two top-notch universities from the South. Read on to see the full list of the best colleges in the US.