The schools that made our Top 50 Green Colleges list share superb sustainability practices, a strong foundation in sustainability education, and a healthy quality of life for students on campus.
We chose our Top 50 Green Colleges for 2025 based on a combination of school-reported data and student opinion, collected in 2023–2024 via our institutional and student surveys.
Green Rating
When ranking our Top 50 Green Colleges, we factored in the school's Green Rating. We tally our Green Rating scores based on institutional data we obtain from school administrators. Our 10 survey questions cover these key factors:
- whether students have a quality of life on campus that is both healthy and sustainable
- how well a school is preparing students for employment in an increasingly green economy
- how environmentally responsible a school's policies are
Additional details about our Green Rating can be found here .
Student Opinion
Student survey responses included student ratings of how sustainability issues influenced their education and life on campus; administration and student support for environmental awareness and conservation efforts; and the visibility and impact of student environmental groups.
Additional details about our Student Survey can be found here .
Out of the almost 600 schools we considered for this project, the Top 50 Green Colleges (not to mention all 511 Green Colleges that are profiled on our site) are, in our opinion, truly up to the task of training the next generation of leaders, who will be responsible for putting green ideas into practice. Find out how these schools infuse sustainability principles into every aspect of campus life.
