Texas Tech Ranks Higher than these Schools in National University Rankings

U.S. News & World Report has released its 2026 rankings, and Texas Tech ranks higher than many more nationally known schools than one may think. Here is a look at schools with football programs that Texas Tech ranks higher than.

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Here is a look at schools that rank lower than Texas Tech in the national university rankings.

First, here is Texas Tech's ranking and some of its nationally ranked programs.

#96 in Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs (tie)
#174 in Economics (tie)
#145 in Best Colleges for Veterans (tie)

U.S. News & World Report pays a lot of attention to rates of first-year student retention and six-year completion. It is known that Texas Tech keeps students longer and graduates them on time than most mid-major Texas D1 schools.

TTU has an endowment of more than $1.7 billion, and the school spends a lot more per student on research equipment, classroom materials, and full-time faculty support than smaller state programs.

Texas Tech University has a law school, top engineering programs, and a connected medical system (Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center). These are all things that university leaders from across the country look at when they score a school.

Texas Tech is an R1 Doctoral University, which means it does the most research of any university in the U.S. It also gets a lot of government funding and PhDs, which gives it a giant edge over D1 colleges in the area, like Texas State and Sam Houston State.

SEC school Mississippi State is ranked lower academically than Texas Tech. The assumption by college football fans in general is that all SEC and especially Big Ten schools are ranked higher academically than schools from the Big 12.

According to U.S. News & World Report, Texas Tech University (TTU) is ranked higher than most Texas universities with Division 1 football teams, such as UTSA, UTEP, Texas State, and UNT.

UTSA is ranked higher than some state of Texas schools but not Texas Tech.

New Mexico State is ranked high for a Conference USA school but not higher than Texas Tech.

Many Mountain West Conference schools, like Wyoming, fall in this range on the U.S. News & World Report.

Texas Tech is ranked higher than West Virginia, who, as many know, is a Big 12 school just like Texas Tech.

North Dakota State made news as they transitioned not only from FCS to FBS but also joined a more prominent Group of Six conference by joining the Mountain West for football this fall season.

Here is another Mountain West school, UNLV, that Texas Tech is ranked higher than in the national university rankings.

The University of New Mexico ranks lower than Texas Tech as well.

Besides Utah State joining the newly reimagined Pac-12 conference, Texas Tech is ranked above them in the national rankings.

Texas Tech is ranked ahead of all three of the above-shown Texas schools that have an FBS football program. When college football fans bring up why certain FBS state of Texas teams are not in a power four conference, academics play a role, and Texas Tech is over 60 spots ranked higher than all three of these schools.

Memphis has done well in the NIL era with deals with FedEx and more. However, they are not as high in the national university rankings as some may think.

Before Boise State joined the Pac-12, a reason why they didn't join the conference was their academics. When college football fans first started clamoring for Power Five conference expansion over a decade ago when the Boise State football program was winning road games at Georgia and going undefeated and defeating TCU in the Fiesta Bowl. Boise State is outside the top 300 in terms of academics overall.

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