Best Small Colleges in Connecticut 2025

Badge for BEST IN CONNECTICUT SMALL COLLEGES

By Dr. James Barham
Reviewed By Jenn Finley

Published: Mar 25, 2021
Updated: Oct 21, 2024

Table of Contents

10 Best Small Colleges in Connecticut 2025

Wesleyan University
Connecticut College
+2
Trinity College
–1
University of Bridgeport
–1
United States Coast Guard Academy
Western Connecticut State University
Eastern Connecticut State University
+2
Albertus Magnus College
+2
Mitchell College
–1
University of Saint Joseph
+1

2025 Ranking Update

Our Influence Ranking Engine™ leverages machine learning to track the real-world influence of colleges and universities over time. Below you’ll see which schools gained or lost ground for the 2025 school year.

Wesleyan University remains in the top position for our 2025 ranking of the best small colleges in Connecticut, while Connecticut College jumped 2 positions to the number 2 spot.

Wesleyan University is offering a number of new interdisciplinary programs, including environmental studies, data science, and social justice. The school has also beefed up their state-of-the-art learning facilities, making the campus even more attractive to potential students.

Connecticut College is working to expand the liberal arts experience at their campus. The school’s “Connections” program integrates internships and academic research across disciplines.

Small colleges in Connecticut are a great option for students interested in a more intimate campus experience, more personal attention from excellent professors, and more immediate access to support services. Whether the focus is on the technical or on the liberal arts, small colleges give you the chance to pursue a well-rounded education while working closely with classmates and professors in a dynamic community atmosphere.

The following list of the best small colleges and universities in Connecticut is composed mainly of four-year undergraduate schools (though a handful also offer graduate programs). We’ve identified 11 small colleges in Connecticut. The list below of the best small colleges in Connecticut. To be included schools must fully accredited, and must have student body populations below 5,000 students.

How do we determine Connecticut's best small colleges and universities?

Methodology

The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great! If you are serious about finding the best colleges and universities for a bachelor’s degree, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching and whether their graduates are themselves advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence in their fields of study.

Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Concentrated Influence provides a ranking that is freer from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.

To rank the influence of schools, we first determine the influence of scholars and professionals based on the number of citations and publications they have had over the past 10 years. In addition to publications and citations, we consider the web links to and from these sources, and the page views of those sources. We then match the influential people to their alma maters and institutions of employment, so that their influence is attributed to those schools. Our machine-learning Influence Ranking algorithm produces a numerical score of academic achievements, merits, and citations across Wikipedia, wikidata, Crossref, Semantic Scholar and an ever-growing body of data. If you are interested in exploring how and why we rank by influence, explore our methodology in more depth.