The Cooper Union has been ranked as the #1 Best Value and the #2 overall undergraduate school in its region by The U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges 2016 guidebook, released Wednesday. The annual publication has also ranked the Albert Nerken School of Engineering at #8 nationally in its cohort. And, in a testament to the school's integration of computer science into its curriculum, it also ranked #4 nationally for computer engineering in spite of not offering a computer science degree. The electrical and mechanical engineering programs were also both ranked in the national top ten.

This is the fifth year in a row with The Cooper Union ranked as either the first or second in the guidebook's list of top regional U.S. schools that focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than half their degrees in liberal arts disciplines. According to the methodology page, the ranking results from data gathered during the spring of 2014 and spring of 2015 relating to "academic excellence," including peer assessment, retention and graduation of students, student selectivity and other factors. Rankings for the School of Engineering and its programs are based on peer judgments of deans and senior faculty who rated programs they are familiar with in two surveys conducted in the spring of 2015.

The Cooper Union has continued to appear in various independently vetted lists as one of the United States' best colleges. In July Money magazine ranked it as the #8 Best College nationally, based on quality of education, cost of attendance and expected income after graduation. Similarly, in July Forbes named The Cooper Union as Americas Most Entrepreneurial college. And in February The Cooper Union ranked first in a national list of Colleges That Pay You Back released by The Princeton Review.