I’m reposting this list since we’re in the midst of the spring college admissions period. This list is a compilation of global rankings of universities. For more about the list (how it was developed and some interesting comparisons to the U.S. News & World Report rankings), see this earlier post.
Choosing a college is a process of exclusion. One begins with a list of thousands of possibilities. You then narrow the list. Most students narrow it dramatically by geography, deciding to attend college within x miles or x-hour’s drive from home. Others narrow it by considering only schools within a certain academic range (e.g., with a certain average SAT/ACT). Others want to attend a private college. Or one that’s affiliated with a religious organization or faith tradition.
Earlier, I ran through this initial step to see what my list of potential colleges would look like if I were heading off to college next fall (2014). I came up with a list of My Top 100 Colleges (the best colleges, in my judgment). But a list of 100 isn’t of much use. I’d need to narrow if down further before diving into the search process. So I took a stab at narrowing it, and here’s what I came up with: Continue reading
College (State) – Enrollment (alphabetical by tier)
75th-Percentile SAT 1500-1600 (verbal and math): Amherst (Mass.) – 1,791; Brown (R.I.) – 8,768; California Institute of Technology (Caltech) – 2,231; Carleton (Minn.) – 2,018; Carnegie Mellon (CMU) (Penna.) – 12,058; Chicago (Ill.) – 12,316; Columbia (N.Y.) – 22,885; Cooper Union (N.Y.) – 988; Cornell (N.Y.) – 21,131; Dartmouth (N.H.) – 6,144; Duke (N.C.) – 15,427; Harvard (Mass.) – 19,872; Harvey Mudd (Calif.) – 777; Haverford (Penna.) – 1,198; Johns Hopkins (Md.) – 21,139; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – 10,894; Northwestern (Ill.) – 19,968; Notre Dame (Ind.) – 12,004; Pomona (Calif.) – 1,586; Princeton (N.J.) – 7,859; Rice (Texas) – 6,224; Stanford (Calif.) – 19,945; Swarthmore (Penna.) – 1,545; Tufts (Mass.) – 10,775; University of Pennsylvania (Penn) – 19,919; Vanderbilt (Tenn.) – 12,838; Washington University in St. Louis (Missouri) – 13,908; Williams (Mass.) – 2,109; Yale (Conn.) – 11,875. Continue reading
For a list of the colleges with the best four-year graduation rates, click here. Haverford (Pa.), Pomona (Cal.) and Swarthmore (Pa.) lead the pack at 91%. To give you some further perspective, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the four-year graduation rate for students pursuing a bachelor’s degree at four-year public institutions is 31%, much lower than the 52% rate at private, nonprofit institutions. The rate at private, for-profit institutions is only 20%. Continue reading
Thebestschools.org has published its list of top 50 colleges. As with any ranking, there is no implied endorsement. I have not assessed the methodology of this ranking system or analyzed its biases. Rather, I pass it on in case it brings a school to your attention that you may have overlooked. And to afford a glimpse of a third-party’s assessment of the college options in the U.S., even if it’s based on values and criteria that may be different from yours.
The website claims the list includes schools you won’t find on other lists. The methodology, according to the authors of the ranking, gives great weight to what awaits students after graduation. Many rankings, including U.S. News, weigh input and institutional wealth factors heavily (e.g., acceptance rates, SAT scores and student-faculty ratios). Thebestschools.org also says it excludes schools “whose main business is indoctrination and politicization.” That’s a good rule in my opinion. Continue reading
Finding My College 