According to U.S. News and World Report, several of the top-ranked history programs in the nation belong to Ivy League schools. Princeton and Yale top the list, with Harvard, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania, or Penn, all in the top 10. Other schools on the East Coast with stellar history departments include John Hopkins University in Baltimore, New York University in New York City and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. All of these schools landed within the top 25 history departments on the U.S. News and World Report 2009 list.
Students seeking schools with history programs in the Midwest have some strong candidates. In the Chicago area, both the University of Chicago and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, score high on the list of top history schools from the Education Portal resource website. Other strong Midwestern programs can be found at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Notre Dame and Indiana universities in Indiana, the University of Wisconsin in Madison and Ohio State University in Columbus.
In the South, history students have the option of choosing among schools throughout the region, each with a sterling reputation for its history department. The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill along with Duke University in Durham are two strong programs in North Carolina. Both are listed in the top 20 on the U.S. News and World Report 2009 listings. Others on that list include the University of Texas in Austin and the University of Virginia (Corcoran) in Charlottesville. Other top programs included in the Education Portal recommendations are Tulane University in New Orleans and Rice University in Houston.
Students on the West Coast also have a choice among many schools with strong history departments. In California, UCLA is included in the top 10 and the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford tie for first place with Princeton on the U.S. News and World Report list. Education Portal ranks UCLA at the top of its list and also includes the University of Washington, in Seattle, in the top 20. The University of California campuses in Davis, San Diego, Irvine and Santa Barbara are recommended, as is the University of Arizona, in Tucson.