Sep 30, 2016 05:36 AM EDT By Emily Marks, UniversityHerald Reporter

Stanford University still took the first place as the top college in California, according to a list by College Factual. This comes after the institution has nabbed the top spot in The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education's best colleges list.

According to College Factual's official website, Stanford University is the top college in the state of California. It is followed by Harvey Mudd College, which is based in Claremont. The California Institute of Technology (CalTech) took the third place in the list.

USA Today College reported that Harvey Mudd is a small, private liberal arts college which focuses on science and engineering as well as arts and humanities. It has focused programs, a low student to faculty ratio as well as high graduation rates. It is also a part of the Claremont University Consortium which allows cross-registration and social interactivity between its 5 undergraduate and 2 graduate college campuses.

CalTech recently nabbed the top spot as the best university in the U.S. as per Times Higher Education's report. Stanford came in second place while the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) placed third. Ivy League universities Harvard and Princeton complete the top five.

Claremont McKenna College and Pomona College got the fourth and fifth spots in College Factual's list, respectively. University of Southern California (USC) got sixth place while University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA), which is one of the colleges that got the most applications for fall 2015, was in seventh place. Soka University of America, University of California - Berkeley and UC - San Diego completed the top 10 list.

UC - San Diego is selective yet affordable for students with a low student loan default rate. Its popular majors are psychology, economics, political science, biology and computer science.

The rankings were based on 11 factors including the student body caliber, educational resources, degree completion and post-graduate earnings. College Factual aimed to measure the quality of education that a student will receive at a certain college in comparison to other colleges in the United States.

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