<p>I know the top 5 but do not have the listing below that.</p>
<p>they release rankings every month?? that's insane, lol......what's the top five??</p>
<p>No, they release rankings once per year.</p>
<p>The top 5 are:</p>
<ol>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Cal Tech</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
</ol>
<p>This list seems to match yours, but it's from 2003. I don't think they've published one since then.
1. MIT
2. Princeton
3. Cal Tech
4. Yale
5. Harvard
6. Stanford
7. Columbia
8. Penn
9. Brown
10. Swarthmore
11. Washington University
12. Amherst
13. UC Berkeley
14. Duke
15. Dartmouth
16. Pomona
17. UCLA
18. Rice
19. Williams
20. Georgetown
21. Cornell
22. Claremont McKenna
23. Harvey Mudd
24. William and Mary
25. Middlebury</p>
<p>P.S. College rankings are BS.</p>
<p>really why?</p>
<p>Georgetown beating Cornell???</p>
<p>I love Georgetown (that's where I've been accepted) but Cornell as the "Ivy" factor.</p>
<p>Not to mention, W&M over Chicago and Northwestern?</p>
<p>Folks, you should read the accompanying articles, which decry the BS of rankings. They did their own only to stir things up a bit. And that's why they have not repeated them.</p>
<p>Those are so bogus! They're trying to promote LACs shamelessly by comparing them to Universities. </p>
<p>Also, Washington university better than UC-Berkeley, UCLA???? oh pleeeze.</p>
<p>Like newmassdad said, read the articles. They're not saying any particular place is "better" than any other place. I myself was rather annoyed that the Atlantic Monthly felt the need to produce rankings even though they think rankings are BS or are usually taken the wrong way. My guess is that their line of thinking was "Rankings are such a bad idea ... people read too much into them without knowing what they mean ... but why not publish our own if they sell magazines so well? ... and just accompany it with an article telling people to take them with a grain of salt and consider the criteria ... even though we know most people will just look at the rankings and think they are all about which schools are 'better' than others."</p>
<p>These rankings are bunk, but I would put WUSTL over UCLA in a second, and probably higher than Cal as well.</p>
<p>Does anyone else remember when (oh ... for about 20-25 years) Wash-U was one of the most unknown, underrated schools in the country? They are such a prime example of "be careful what you wish for, you might get it." After going from 1970-1995 (or so) as one of the best schools "nobody" ever heard of, they (apparently) paid the big bucks for marketing consultants, got marketing hip, played games with the less than venerable ranking systems, and became (seemingly) an overnight sensation.</p>
<p>Except they were anything but a newcomer to being an elite school. They were the same school as always ... only now attracting better students, better teachers, and more money.</p>
<p>Sure, they seem to be everybody's whipping boy ("how can WUSTL be better than [insert your favorite elite school here]"), but it's arguably a better school than it ever was, and it always has been a pretty impressive place for an UNDERGRADUATE to go to school. All things considered, I'm sure they're quite happy to take a public beating (mostly from those with somewhat of a knee-jerk reaction to what schools make up the top schools) while they continue to be a very high quality school.</p>
<p>...at the title of the "rankings" list: The Selectivity Illusion. Not only is this list merely an ordering of the most difficult schools to gain acceptance to, the whole point of publishing it appears to be to debunk the myth that admission "selectivity" has anything to do with a college's "quality," or the "elite-ness" of admitted students (I use quotations because these are all terms whose definitions are open to debate). Anyway, that's probably why if you go to any of the listed schools' web sites, you won't see any of them carping about their inclusion on the Atlantic Monthly list. </p>
<p>Again, the Atlantic Monthly doesn't even attempt to rank colleges in terms of the "quality." All their list does is provide the numbers to support their investigation of college admissions selectivity. (I thought it was really interesting that there was a strong correlation between a school's age and its selectivity - basically the older the school, the better reputation it seems to have). If you're going to rely on rankings lists (which I agree are bogus) to make your decisions, you should probably make sure you understand what they're trying to "rank."</p>
<p>And yes, please do read the accompanying articles. You might also want to read an article, "Who Needs Harvard," by Gregg Easterbrook, from the 2004 college issue, in which he makes a pretty good case for public schools being just as "good" as the "gotta-get-in" elite private schools.</p>
<p>Okay, I have a huge problem with WUSTL being ahead of Duke, Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, Cornell etc. Has ANYONE ever chose WUSTL over these schools for reasons either than money?</p>
<p>Marketing and endowment $ can turn out applications.</p>