KINGSVILLE (Sept. 22, 2026) — The U.S. News and World Report released its 2027 Best Colleges rankings this morning, where Texas A&M University-Kingsville (TAMUK) was ranked in the top five percent for Social Mobility among 1,700 universities assessed in a data-driven comparison. The university was ranked No. 86 nationwide in Social Mobility and No. 10 in Texas among public universities (No. 12 overall).
Social Mobility is assessed by how successful universities were in enrolling disadvantaged students who were awarded Pell Grants of which a vast majority are awarded to students whose gross family incomes are less than $50,000.
Universities were evaluated on two factors: a university’s Pell recipient graduation rate and Pell graduation performance, which assesses success at achieving equitable outcomes for students from underserved backgrounds.
“This type of national recognition affirms our commitment to affordability, access and student success and the power of higher education to transform lives,” said Texas A&M University-Kingsville president Dr. Robert Vela. “When our students graduate from Texas A&M-Kingsville, they are not only earning a degree, they are elevating their sights on something greater and their successes become the foundation for multigenerational prosperity, while creating new opportunities for their communities.”
The rankings also place A&M-Kingsville as a Top 15 public school in Texas, coming in at No. 14, the third-highest ranking in the Texas A&M University System behind Texas A&M (No. 2) and Prairie View A&M (No. 12).
The U.S. News evaluated more than 1,700 U.S. four-year bachelor’s degree-granting institutions across the nation in five different categories that include National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities, Regional Colleges, and Arts & Faith.
U.S. News used the 2025 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, produced by the American Council on Education (ACE) to determine its categories for the 2027 rankings, where a mix of ACE's institutional classifications and research activity designations were collapsed into ranking categories.
Schools in each category are scored on up to 17 academic quality factors. The raw data is first transformed into calculated values, which is then converted to a scale, allowing fair comparisons across different measures.
Factors include indicators that emphasize student outcomes such as graduation rates, first-year retention rates, graduation rate performance, Pell graduation rates, Pell Graduation performance, earnings by major, student-faculty ratio, and peer assessment.
-TAMUK-
