The Washington Monthly's College Guide and Rankings is known for its unique yardstick and methodology. The annual rankings which has been hailed as the 'more interesting than virtually any other ranking out there' by New York Times has named the nation's top colleges for the year 2012.

The Rankings are divided into four major categories-National Universities, Liberal Arts Colleges, Master's Universities and Baccalaureate College-and each of this lists 100 universities. The Top Spot in each of the four categories have been occupied by University of California- San Diego, Bryn Mawr College (PA), Trinity University (TX) and Elizabeth City State University respectively.

Washington Monthly, unlike any other publication's rankings, rates the colleges based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories:

* Social Mobility -recruiting and graduating low-income students

*Research -producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs

* Service-encouraging students to give something back to their country.

The non-profit bimonthly magazine's ranking prides itself as not relying on 'crude and easily manipulated measures of wealth, exclusivity, and prestige for its rankings.' It says it rates schools based on what they are doing for their students and the country.

Each of the three criteria considered for the rankings are comprehensive and they are divided further into sub-categories which contain empirical data. The publication has also mentioned that it has not considered one criterion as being important over the other and while calculating the final score it weighted all three criteria equally.

The Top 10 National Universities for the year 2012:

* University of California-San Diego
* Texas A&M University
* Stanford University
* Univ. of North Carolina- Chapel Hill
* University of California- Berkeley
* University of California- Los Angeles
* Case Western Reserve University
* University of Washington- Seattle
* University of California-Riverside
* Georgia Tech

For complete list of National, Liberal Arts, Master's and Baccalaureate Colleges visit Washington Monthly.