2025 College Rankings

Georgetown University is located just a bus ride away from downtown Washington, D.C., an advantage that the Catholic, Jesuit-guided school often uses to portray itself as an elite institution. In recent years, however, the school’s quality has fallen.

The school is captive to an activist administration and subject to a coercive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) found that since 2015, Georgetown has had one of the highest rates of faculty being investigated, penalized, or sanctioned for engaging in constitutionally protected forms of speech. This tendency exploded into the public eye in 2022 when Ilya Shapiro, a senior lecturer and executive director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, faced intense pressure from the school’s DEI office after he tweeted negatively about President Joe Biden’s decision to use race as a criterion in his Supreme Court selections. The school accused Shapiro of creating a “hostile environment” by airing his opinion. Though a lengthy investigation ultimately exonerated him, Shapiro resigned in frustration.

Still, the diversity regime does not control every aspect of Georgetown. The school requires that students submit SAT or ACT scores in the admissions process, a sign that—in this regard, at least—merit is more important than diversity.

The ability to speak freely on campus is often restricted. In 2025, FIRE ranked Georgetown in the bottom 10 of the 250 schools that it surveys annually for free speech and gave it a “red” rating, meaning that the school’s policies restrict freedom of expression. The same organization found that campus tolerance of guest speakers is only middling—liberal speakers are given more leeway than conservative ones—and that Georgetown has a disturbingly high rate of student attempts to de-platform speakers. Of all the schools we studied, Georgetown has the highest number of de-platformings per 1,000 students.

Still, there are some bright spots on campus. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) counts two of Georgetown’s institutes among its Oases of Excellence: the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics offers classes that “advance the study of professional ethics and the moral foundations of market societies”; and the Tocqueville Forum for Political Understanding seeks to “advance the study of America’s founding principles and their roots in the Western philosophical and religious traditions” through a series of conferences and lectures.

Georgetown’s response to the spike in radical anti-Semitism on college campuses has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, the administration successfully prevented an encampment from forming in spring 2024—student activists instead joined the encampment at nearby George Washington University. On the other hand, the school has played host to a number of anti-Zionist speakers in recent years, whose lectures often become the occasion for anti-Semitic protests. At a school of about 8,000 undergraduates, the AMCHA Initiative reports that in the last few years, there have been 168 anti-Semitic incidents for every 1,000 Jewish students. Anti-Israel protesters demanded in 2024 that the school participate in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, an overture that the administration rebuffed. In fall 2024, the school revised its guidelines for protests, requiring groups to pay for the cost of security at any event—including anti-Israel-related events—where it is deemed necessary by the university administration, in order to reduce the possibility of a violent anti-Israel demonstration on campus.

Those who attend Georgetown are typically well served economically after graduation. The Princeton Review ranks Georgetown’s alumni network among the top 20 private schools in the country. Graduates tend to be very successful in their fields. Median annual earnings ten years after initial enrollment overperform expectations by over $9,000, based on data from SAT scores and Pell Grant recipients.