Two Virginia colleges are getting attention for graduating students who excel in today’s workplace. Both the University of Virginia and William & Mary were named to Forbes’ 2026 list of “New Ivies.”
The list began in 2024 in response to “growing employer skepticism about whether Ivy League diplomas still guaranteed the best recruits,” according to Forbes.
The third-annual list identified 20 universities — 10 public and 10 private — whose alumni ranked highly with employers in today’s job market. The list paid particular attention to artificial intelligence this year due to AI’s significant impact on the job market.
“The most promising talents today are beginning to emerge from institutions that prioritize intellectual rigor over inherited prestige,” one employer told Forbes. The employer also said that ideal graduates in the age of AI are ones who have cultivated “uniquely human” traits like “complex emotional intelligence, radical adaptability and visionary creativity to orchestrate AI tools rather than compete with them.”
List Methodology
To create the ranking, Forbes began with a list of public and private U.S. universities. It excluded the eight Ivy League schools (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale). This year, Forbes also eliminated five “Ivy plus” colleges from consideration — Stanford, MIT, Duke, the University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins University.
Schools had to meet enrollment minimums — 3,000 for private or 4,000 for public — and at least half of entrants must have submitted SAT or ACT scores. For private schools, the median SAT score was 1530, and the median ACT was 34. For the large public schools, the median SAT was 1460, and the median ACT was 31.
Schools were then chosen based on input from more than 100 C-suite and hiring executives. This year, survey respondents also answered questions about how AI is changing hiring practices.
“It should come as no surprise that the New Ivies are leaders in AI adoption, given their focus on workforce preparation,” Forbes said.
Virginia Schools
This was UVA’s third time on the list and William & Mary’s second. UVA reported an acceptance rate of 17%, a median SAT score of 1480, and a median ACT score of 33. William & Mary reported an acceptance rate of 34%, a median SAT of 1470, and a median ACT of 33.
Both schools also ranked in Forbes’ 2025 list of the Top 25 Public Colleges in the U.S.
DC’s Georgetown University was also listed as a New Ivy.
Feature image of William & Mary, stock.adobe.com
