A new set of rankings confirms the obvious: Yalies love Yale.

Yale College has the happiest freshmen in America, according to a list released by the Center for College Authority & Productivity. The rankings were determined by comparing the retention rates of various universities against those of their peers. The more freshmen chose to stay at a school for their sophomore year (re: didn’t transfer), the higher the school placed in CCAP’s list. Yale’s annual retention rate is over 99 percent.

In addition to validating happy Yalies, CCAP also develops the methodology for Forbes Magazine’s annual ranking of America’s best colleges. Yale ranks 14th in the most recent edition of the publication.

The 12 colleges with the happiest freshmen are as follows:

  1. Yale University
  2. Swarthmore College
  3. Princeton University
  4. Stanford University
  5. Williams College
  6. Caltech
  7. The University of Chicago
  8. Harvard University
  9. Columbia University
  10. Dartmouth College
  11. The University of Pennsylvania
  12. The University of Notre Dame

MARISSA MEDANSKY