http://money.com/money/best-colleges/rankings/best-small-colleges/
Nice list!
I have never been a fan of college rankings, but this might be a new low. I have great respect for Simmons and Bentley as both are excellent institutions, but better than Harvey Mudd? Holy Cross is also a great school, but better than Amherst, Swarthmore and Pomona? Sigh…
I think better is in the eye of the beholder. This is especially true when it comes to the college lists among many great schools.
This isn’t a list of the most selective. Which is taken by some as a defacto illustration of a school’s obvious superiority.
There’s a lot to the collegiate experience beyond selectivity.
And imho, is there really that much variability in the abilities and intellect of the top 25000 of America’s most accomplished high schoolers? In a world of 8 billion? Perhaps at MIT and CalTech, in terms of pure academic horsepower , especially in the sciences, perhaps.
And they are #1 and #2 on the list anyway.
It’s like any other list. Random attributes. Tabulated and ranked. The attributes being meaningful or not is naturally up for debate.
Simmons is number 33 or something. That’s worth knocking?
I don’t know much about the school other than a sister in law from Sweden attended. Pretty smart lady and accomplished. So who knows. And it’s in Boston. Always a good start in my book.
And Holy Cross may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s been a fantastic school for a long time.
The criteria is spelled out and added up. Not a conspiracy.
And it’s nice to see the maritime academies get some love. Certainly, they are a bit of a “specialty” path but outcomes and costs seem pretty good. So good for them.
Okay, let’s be honest here. MIT has over 11,000 students. That is not a small college.
It may be the #1 mid-sized college, but it isn’t small.
MIT has 4500 undergrads. The other 7000 are graduate students.
You can adjust the factors to rank the schools by if you don’t like the ones that Money chose.
Little technicalities aside, this list is a great starting point for students looking for smaller, selective and rigorous top schools. Specially when it comes to small schools for solid STEM education with equally good non STEM education, it’s hard to find anything better than MIT, CIT and Rice.