Aug 26, 2014 05:40 AM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

University of California, San Diego, has topped the list of national university rankings by Washington Monthly magazine for the fifth time in a row.

The San Diego campus stresses on factors like enrolling and graduating low-income students, supporting research and encouraging students' public service.

Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla said that the ranking highlights the university's core mission of contributing to the public good.

"This is an extraordinary achievement, as the criteria for this ranking exemplify our core values and our vision to be a student-centered, research-focused, service-oriented public university that provides opportunity for all," Khosla said in a statement.

UC San Diego was among six UC campuses included in the top 20. Eight UC campuses were placed in the top 100. San Diego State University was ranked 87th.

The ranking is based on three years of data in three categories: social mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students); research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and Ph.D.); and service (encouraging students to give back to their country).

"Instead of promoting schools for how many students they exclude or how 'prestigious' they are, we give high marks to institutions that contribute to society, enroll low-income students, help them graduate, and don't charge and arm an a leg to attend," said Paul Glastris, editor-in-chief of the magazine.

UCSD is followed by University of California, Riverside. For the second consecutive year, the magazine ranked UCR second in its 10th annual College Ranking Survey. It is also the fourth consecutive year that UC Riverside has been placed among the top 10 schools in the survey, including No. 2 ranking in 2013, fifth in 2011 and ninth in 2012.

"UCR is beginning to achieve the recognition it so richly deserves," Chancellor Kim Wilcox said in a statement. "The ranking by Washington Monthly places value on student success, for which UCR has also been recognized by the National Science Foundation through its support of our undergraduate learning communities and instructional innovations, and by the Department of Education through its interest in what we're doing at UCR. The campus is rapidly becoming a national model for student success."

Top 10 Colleges by Washington Monthly:

1)University of California at San Diego (first in 2013)

2) University of California at Riverside (second)

3) University of California at Berkeley (fifth)

4) Texas A&M University (third)

5) University of California at Los Angeles (10th)

6) Stanford University (sixth)

7) University of Washington at Seattle (13th)

8) University of Texas at El Paso (seventh)

9) Case Western Reserve University (fourth)

10) Harvard University (eighth)

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