Best Colleges in Maine 2025

Badge for BEST IN MAINE COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES

By Dr. James Barham
Reviewed By Jenn Finley

Updated: Oct 8, 2024

Key Takeaways

Sixteen schools in Maine meet our criteria for the best colleges and universities in the state.
Students attending one of the top Maine colleges will be taught by some of the most influential professors in the world.
Pursuing a degree at a public university in Maine is one of the most affordable options for a higher education in the state.

Table of Contents

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.

In 2025, the top ten schools in our ranking of the best colleges in Maine remained fairly stable. The University of Maine was able to rise to the top ranking position as the university launched the Maine Climate Science Initiative, which offers students hands-on research opportunities in environmental science, renewable energy, and climate change mitigation. The university has also enhanced its STEM facilities, with new state-of-the-art labs for fields such as engineering, marine biology, and data analytics.

Additionally, UMaine has upgraded its student wellness programs, providing expanded mental health resources, wellness workshops, and fitness programs aimed at fostering holistic student well-being. These updates reflect the university’s commitment to sustainability, scientific innovation, and student support.

Colleges and Universities in Maine

The 16 schools on our ranking include a mix of both public universities and private colleges. The schools vary widely in tuition costs, from as little as $8,000 to more than $64,000. The sizes of the schools vary widely as well, with more than 15,000 students at the University of Maine to less than 1,000 students at The College of the Atlantic.

One thing that doesn’t vary is the quality of education that students receive from one of Maine’s best colleges. Whether you are seeking an associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate degree from either a traditional college or through online classes, an accredited college in Maine is a great choice.

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What are Maine’s Colleges & Universities?

Maine’s Best Overall

How do we determine Maine’s best 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.

We’ve identified 16 colleges and universities in Maine that meet our criteria. This list of the top colleges in Maine below focuses on schools that offer bachelor’s degrees. The ranking features fully accredited public and private colleges and universities in Maine.