Having a balanced and happy college life is as important for a student’s health, growth and future prospects as having a good education. If you are miserable then higher ranking or lower cost may not be the best value for you.
https://thestacker.com/stories/1753/most-well-rounded-colleges-america
^So are saying rankings don’t matter except the one you provide? If you read the article the ranking you offer is a summation of 6 Niche sub rankings.
So as to avoid the risk of observation bias the following is Niche’s top ten “Best College” ranking and is a summation of all niche sub categories.
1 MIT
2 Stanford
3 Harvard
4 Yale
5 Princeton
6 U Penn
7 Columbia
8 Duke
9 Brown
10 Cal Tech
Identical names different order than WSJ rankings:
1 Harvard
2 MIT
3 Yale
4 Columbia
5 Cal Tech
6 Stanford
7 Brown
7 Duke
9 Princeton
10 U Penn
And consistent with Forbes:
1 Harvard
2 Yale
3 Stanford
4 MIT
5 Princeton
6 Cal Tech
7 U Penn
8 Brown
9 Dartmouth
19 Duke
I am sure all can be parsed by subsection to distort results, and all consider happiness and results. Those at the top however remain remarkably consistent when assessed for the totality of student experience.
Neither. I’m only using this article as a conversation starter to hear what others think about this topic.
You could ask what people think along with posting it. Vs just stating what you think is best.
By the way, this list has 3 public schools and a west coast LAC among top 10 while only 2 out of 8 Ivies made the cut. No technology institute made top 10.
Is there a question here? I don’t think anyone will disagree with the premise (assuming affordability).
This is the essence of the article in my words, not necessarily my opinion but I should’ve worded it as a question.
Northeastern ranks 20! I like it! 
I think you could pick just about any random schools out of the hat and make it as good a case as this ranking, no?
What do I think? I think that the ranking game on this website is the adult equivalent of “Chance Me? I’ll Chance You Back!”
Michigan ranked #7. Their only downfall according to this was diversity…I know their working hard to change that.
Question is… Do people really take Niche seriously? I thought it was a nice site to gain a different perspective on schools /students but I wouldn’t use it to rank a school. I see it more as a fun site… Like ranking which campus has the best food, most beautiful grounds and such.
Is Niche the one that includes the “hotness” of students in their methodology?
The article sets out to identify the “most well rounded” school by combining as averaging equally 6 factors. In theory no school would have to excel at any one factor to be at the top of this type of ranking.
In my opinion however most kids (and people) do have priorities along with preferences. For instance some kids might prefer watching Division I sports while others want to actually play Division III and yet others hate sports entirely. For some academics are all that matters while for others it’s about outcomes or social scene.
The problem with this article is that it only serves to establish a baseline for mediocrity without regard for personal priorities. In my mind either:
Use all of the data which Niche produces and ranks under “best colleges”. This gives you the total picture with no bias or preference. As I highlight in#2 there exist a near consensus around the top schools. WSJ, Forbes and Niche all include virtually the same schools in their top ten.
Alternatively look at the individual sub categories (campus, student life, academics, athletics, value and diversity) and weight schools based on your own preferences.
The article posted attempts to be cute by cherry picking a few categories and weighting them equally. If that was the intended methodology I suspect Niche would have offered it as such not a third party commentator. I can take or leave rankings but if you are going to use one I suggest the broadest criteria possible or the most specific. Anything in between can be manipulated and amounts in my mind to noise.
@Knowsstuff “Question is… Do people really take Niche seriously?”
I only found the Niche site a year ago but I think there is a lot of good information in it, especially when they survey current and former students perspectives on their college experiences. Their rankings also seem in line with other sites like USNR. I think if you use the site with other college admission materials and information, it can be helpful.
@socaldad2002 totally agree but I would never use it as a sole source. The student reviews are good but you can tell the students that are not doing well also by their reviews. There is some useful information.
This rank seems to be biased to west coast schools, Stanford, USC and Pomona making top three. I don’t understand
listing GaTech as “well rounded” and leaving off MIT which has way better humanities and social sciences, economics, and political science, and business college, compared to GaTech.
GaTech is the opposite of “well rounded”. , and it makes this list as 38. GaTech is focused on engineering over science, and humanities and social sciences, GaTech hardly offers a decent English class, and no English major, and very deep in technical requirements. Students at GaTech are almost all majoring in four majors: CS, Industrial engineering, Mechanical engineering, and computer engineering. Well rounded and GaTech do not belong in the same sentence.
Gatech belongs in in list that is titled "specialized, rigorous, in depth technical school ".
The list includes a lot of top public programs that I personally like though. (Purdue, U of Maryland College Park, etc)
I believe they are “well rounded”.
No ranking list is perfect but Niche is a good source of information.
We can’t undermine it by calling it west coast bias. Those are good schools and nice weather can add more value to any college experience.
I agree about GT. Imho tech institutes and LACs are great for niche education but you can’t count these as truly balanced.
Stanford, USC, Pomona, Rice, Yale, UCLA, U Mich, Duke, Vandy, Harvard make good sense but many lower ranked are great places for balanced experience. If nothing else, this system of ranking gives applicants a different perspective which has some value.
^Sounds like your definition of well-balanced simply equals “big”.
I didn’t pick these, just mentioning top ten names from this list. If you ask me, any place with more than 10,000 students becomes too impersonal in my opinion. Same goes for tiny places with less students than many high schools, just too limiting to provide a good balance and spectrum of experiences.
^Nevertheless, four small, rural LACs (The University of Richmond, Amherst, Middlebury and Bowdoin) made the list… What do you suppose makes them so different from any other T20 LAC?