<p>I know a thousand posts have been made about the U.S. News & World Report's rankings, but my internet keeps crashing and it loads one CC page per ten minutes. AND I am desperate like nothing to get the top fifteen... twenty liberal arts according to the rankings.</p>
<p>Can anyone post them in reply to this, pretty pretty pretty please?</p>
<ol>
<li>Williams College (MA) </li>
<li>Amherst College (MA)</li>
<li>Swarthmore College (PA)</li>
<li>Wellesley College (MA)</li>
<li>Carleton College (MN)
Pomona College (CA) </li>
<li>Bowdoin College (ME)
Davidson College (NC) </li>
<li>Haverford College (PA)
Wesleyan University (CT) </li>
<li>Middlebury College (VT) </li>
<li>Vassar College (NY) </li>
<li>Claremont McKenna College (CA)
Smith College (MA)
Washington and Lee University (VA) </li>
<li>Colgate University (NY)
Grinnell College (IA)
Harvey Mudd College (CA) </li>
<li>Colby College (ME)
Hamilton College (NY) </li>
<li>Bryn Mawr College (PA) </li>
<li>Bates College (ME) </li>
<li>Oberlin College (OH) </li>
<li>Mount Holyoke College (MA)
Trinity College (CT) </li>
<li>Bucknell University (PA)
Macalester College (MN)
Scripps College (CA) </li>
<li>Barnard College (NY)
Kenyon College (OH) </li>
<li>College of the Holy Cross (MA)
Lafayette College (PA) </li>
<li>Colorado College<br>
Sewanee University of the South (TN) </li>
<li>Bard College (NY)
Connecticut College<br>
Whitman College (WA) </li>
<li>Franklin and Marshall College (PA)
Furman University (SC) </li>
<li>Dickinson College (PA)
Union College (NY) </li>
<li>Centre College (KY)
DePauw University (IN)
Occidental College (CA) </li>
<li>Gettysburg College (PA)
Rhodes College (TN)
Skidmore College (NY) </li>
<li>Sarah Lawrence College (NY)
Wabash College (IN) </li>
<li>Denison University (OH) </li>
<li>Wheaton College (IL)
Willamette University (OR) </li>
<li>Agnes Scott College (GA)
Beloit College (WI)
Illinois Wesleyan University<br>
Kalamazoo College (MI)
Lawrence University (WI)
Reed College (OR)1 </li>
<li>College of Wooster (OH)
Drew University (NJ)
Pitzer College (CA) </li>
<li>Southwestern University (TX)
St. Lawrence University (NY)
St. Olaf College (MN)
Wheaton College (MA) </li>
<li>Spelman College (GA)
Wofford College (SC) </li>
<li>Hobart and William Smith Col. (NY)
Sweet Briar College (VA) </li>
<li>Austin College (TX)
Birmingham - Southern College (AL)
Earlham College (IN)
Hendrix College (AR)
Mills College (CA)
Muhlenberg College (PA)
Ursinus College (PA) </li>
<li>Gustavus Adolphus College (MN)
Knox College (IL)
Lewis and Clark College (OR)
St. John's University (MN)
University of Puget Sound (WA)
Virginia Military Institute * </li>
<li>Albion College (MI)
Allegheny College (PA)
Randolph - Macon Woman's College (VA)
Washington and Jefferson Col. (PA) </li>
<li>Hollins University (VA)
St. Mary's College of Maryland * </li>
<li>Augustana College (IL)
Hanover College (IN)
Millsaps College (MS)
Ohio Wesleyan University<br>
Presbyterian College (SC)
Thomas Aquinas College (CA)
Washington College (MD) </li>
<li>Bennington College (VT)
Goucher College (MD)
Hillsdale College (MI)
Hope College (MI)
Principia College (IL) </li>
<li>College of St. Benedict (MN)
Hampshire College (MA)
Juniata College (PA)
Luther College (IA) </li>
<li>Coe College (IA)
Lake Forest College (IL)
Randolph - Macon College (VA)
Transylvania University (KY)
Wells College (NY)
Wittenberg University (OH)</li>
</ol>
<p>Reed should be SO much higher.
Stupid US News rankings.</p>
<p>Don't put too much stock in them.</p>
<p>Apart from Reed, are there other LACs that challenge the rankings?</p>
<p>Princeton Review has them Carleton, Amherst, Smith, Pomona, and Haverford.</p>
<p>I have a senior in college ( in the pac northwest) and lately several parents with rising high school seniors have been asking me about schools. These are kids who have been taking lots of AP courses, doing very well, very prepared for college.
So upon hearing that they are very studious, yadda, yadda, I suggest Reed College. good school, gorgeous campus, great city.
"oh, yes." they say " we looked at Reed, but he decided he didn't want to work that hard- he's applying to Stanford ( fill in the blank Ivy equiv) instead" !!</p>
<p>Princeton Review ranks St. John's college with the "Best Overall Undergraduate Experience" in addition to a lot of other good lists. They don't even make the second tier of the US News ranking. It's hilarious, a few years ago they were in the top 25--they stopped sending the statistics and fell back to the 4th tier.</p>
<p>Just like Reed, they don't send any of the statistics...here is thier statement: </p>
<p>St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, has chosen not to participate in any collegiate rankings surveys. We have asked U.S. News and World Report not to include the college, and we have not sent current information for use in the survey. St. John's College is opposed in principle to rankings. We want to explain to you some of our reasons:</p>
<p>Rankings do a disservice to students and their parents as they search for the best college. Making a decision about where to spend those four years is a serious and difficult one: we think that you need to know more about a college than the numbers used to come up with the survey results can provide. Rankings are almost always about popularity, prestige, and perceived quality of education, but they say virtually nothing about what happens after a student enrolls, nothing about the educational experience itself.</p>
<p>Rankings attempt to quantify the value of an education. Although the collection and publication of information about such things as location, class size, and programs offered is useful to students and their parents, the statistics used in the rankings do not offer that kind of information. How can the interaction between faculty and students be quantified? What kind of numbers tell you about the interests students discover as they explore new ideas and participate in scholastic and extra-curricular programs? Do statistics reflect the skills in thinking, writing, and analysis that students develop during the course of a well-designed and cohesive program of study?</p>
<p>Over the years, St. John's College has been ranked everywhere from the third tier, to the second, to the first, to the "Top 25" among national liberal arts colleges. Yet we haven't changed. Our mission and our methods have been virtually constant for almost 60 years. We would rather be ourselves and have our college speak for itself than be a part of this fluctuating outside analysis.</p>
<p>The distinctiveness of each individual college and the diversity among them tend to be lost in a scale of "best-good-worse." Research university or small liberal arts college? Religious affiliation or pre-professional training? Core curriculum or a multitude of majors? America's colleges offer all of these. A college that is exactly right for a particular student-- in its mission, mode of teaching, location, moral or religious character-- might receive a lower rank in the survey than a college which would not suit the needs of that student.</p>
<p>The kinds of data used to rank schools in the U.S. News and World Report survey are not indications of educational excellence. Some results highlight competitiveness, particularly in admissions. Examples are the acceptance to rejection ratio among applicants, average SAT scores, and class rank. Endowment per undergraduate, faculty salaries, and alumni giving are indications of fiscal status, not necessarily of quality of education. So-called reputation rankings-- in which college presidents, deans, and admissions officers rate other schools-- are also misleading; they may overlook a fine but little-known college, and even if they do point out a good one, they do not tell you for whom that school is a good choice and why.</p>
<hr>
<p>It's interesting to me that they are rated so favorably with Princeton Review...it must mean that they send statistical information to them, and not the US News. Reed also makes a lot of lists with the Princeton Review while they don't send anything to US. News.</p>
<p>Come on gphoenix, you don't need rankings, you know you're going to the best LAC in the country! :)</p>
<p>IMO Reed is probably the best Liberal Arts College in the country followed by Swarthmore. I think AW don't compare. Reed and Swat make their students think analytical and critically. Their students are probably the brightest and smartest in the country. BTW, the avg GPA at Reed is 2.9. Now whose better?</p>
<p>i didn't know that Barnard was ranked so poorly.</p>
<p>Barnard isn't ranked all that poorly. It's in the first tier. ALL of the colleges in the first tier there are fantastic schools where you could get a great education.</p>
<p>Hi,
I keep getting literature from Whitman saying that it was ranked as "one of the top 10 co ed liberal arts colleges by the 2005 Princeton Review". Is this true?</p>
<p>Also, if it is, how could this ranking be SO far off from US News? Is Whitman still considered "top tier" by US News?</p>
<p>Whitman IS an excellent school with excellent academics and a very caring faculty. The Princeton Review uses a different methodology than the U.S. News & World Report thus the difference in "rankings." Which is one of the reasons NOT toworry about the rankings --- any school in the Top 100 (which was listed above) is going to be academically solid, any school in the Top 50 is going to be excellent (although truth be told, there are quite a few "hidden gems" in the second half of the top 100).</p>
<p>juniorinthefall--if you really believe that colleges like Amherst or Williams don't inspire their students to think critically...or encourage their students to think critically less than any other top college...than you have plenty more college research to complete.</p>
<p>Mini--the princetonreview rankings are all completely bunk. I wouldn't bet a dime on the validity of them. Furthermore, your listing of the pr best colleges is, in fact, your own ranking based off of princetonreview information. When posting that you owe your readers to, at the very least, explain how you came upon that ranking and how these colleges numerically compare (is the difference between them significant? Is the difference between those five and a different five significant?).</p>
<p>Could ask the same thing about USNWR, where they ask the dean at UMass-Amherst, who has never been west of the Mississippi, about the academic prestige of Whitman.</p>
<p>PR Ranking is simple: add their rankings for academic quality, quality of campus life, selectivity, and financial aid/scholarships. If you like use just the first two, or take out selectivity, you still get basically the same result. </p>
<p>The big differences, which I think you would be the first one to embrace, is that the indicators suggest that, once you remove the "prestige" issues and the grad schools, the education available at the best LACS far exceeds that at the big uni.s, Ivies or not. That's the big picture, and I'm surprised that you can't see it.</p>
<p>mini, being an old williams gal yourself, you should know by now that haon will never be happy or leave you alone until you state that Williams is the best college in the country and just exempt it from of any ranking system-he will go away quietly with that proviso</p>
<p>mini is XY AFAIK</p>
<p>actually I knew that, I am still stuck on the concept of 'mini mouse', confuses me</p>
<p>mini,</p>
<p>I agree with your point about LACs versus universities. In fact, I agree with most everything you have to say regarding what counts when it comes to undergraduate education. Furthermore, I agree with most of your thoughts regarding how to rank universities--I think academic quality, selectivity, and quality of life should all be weighed heavily (I do not agree that finaid should receive any weight, however--why do you include that in your ranking?). </p>
<p>I disagree strongly with the use of princetonreview rankings for anything. The rankings compare Princeton students' perceptions of Princeton with Harvard students' perceptions of Harvard. A Princeton undergrad may rank Princeton a 3 academically (out of 5) and rank Harvard a 2 when asked to compare. A Harvard undergrad may rate Harvard a 4 academically and Princeton a 5. In this situation you have both the Princeton and Harvard undergrad agreeing that Princeton is 1 better than Harvard, yet since princetonreview doesn't ask them to compare, the rankings have Harvard ranked 1 better than Princeton. Students are asked to judge their school against itself, so a school that has students with high expectations will see worse rankings than a school with students with low expectations, even if the former school is demonstratably better.</p>
<p>However, all of this aside, the bigger problem with princetonreview is the methodology for gathering this survey data. Princetonreview representatives do not collect the data. In fact, school officials do not even collect the data--all of the data is entirely student collected. In effect, princetonreview mails a couple hundred surveys to one student, who then mails these surveys back completed (supposedly by a fair selection of students) a couple of weeks later. Are there instructions on how to obtain a representative survey group? No. Is there anything preventing that student from influencing the content of the surveys? No. In fact, is there anything to prevent that student from filling out all of the surveys him/herself (with the exception of his/her word)? No! Does princetonreview care? As long as their books sell, I doubt it. </p>
<p>Now, USNews certainly isn't perfect, but it's significantly better than princetonreview.</p>
<p>hubbellgardner--Give me a break. Even if I thought rankings could capture undergraduate education (I don't), Williams is ranked high enough under mini's system to leave anyone ranking troll happy--6th-ranked Williams gets 388/400 which is doubtfully any meaningfully different from 1st-ranked Carleton's 391/400. I'm just pointing out the foolishness of using princetonreview as a basis for anything.</p>