Most well-rounded colleges

^Because the author used selective criteria to avoid the same conclusions reached by Niche who supplied all of the data. In other words they wouldn’t have been able to exploit Niches source material unless they cherry picked a “different” result.

“Those at the top however remain remarkably consistent when assessed for the totality of student experience.”

There’s not a lot of consistency when you include student experience as this ranking is trying to do. Once you bring in athletics, most of the ivies are out of the top 10 or 20 as are MIT and Cal Tech, value and diversity would favor pubic schools.

“GaTech is the opposite of “well rounded”.”

It could be for academics, but for other things like athletics it’s going to good, campus, student life may be better.

Actually the Niche Best Schools includes student experience and athletics just includes more than this study. Ironic that this “well rounded” approach includes fewer inputs then the actual Niche survey. Well rounded typically would include a broader criteria not cherry pick.

Worth reading the methodology not just the outcomes.

“As I highlight in#2 there exist a near consensus around the top schools.”

Consensus can and should change, don’t be so tied down in your rankings. The first US News ranking based only on reputation, i.e a consensus, had Stanford #1 and Michigan 7, the same as this ranking ironically. Group-think, not good.

^So here is a rating devoid of subjectivity. Rhodes Scholarship winners by school in ranked order…

362 Harvard
245 Yale
210 Princeton
102 Stanford
63 Dartmouth
55 Brown
51 Chicago
47 MIT
43 Duke
31 Cornell

Top 10 Private LACs

35 Williams
32 Reed
28 Swarthmore
26 Sewanee
23 Davidson
22 Bowdoin
20 Amherst / Haverford
18 Carleton
16 Middlebury / Oberlin / Washington & Lee

Top 10 Public Colleges

93 USMA
53 UVA
47 USNA
44 UNC Chapel Hill
39 USAFA
37 U Washington
32 U Wisconsin
29 UT Austin
28 U Oklahoma
27 U Kansas / Michigan / Montana

Or for others this matters:

AP NCAA Basketball Ranking
1 Duke (53) 3-0 1,564
2 Kansas (7) 3-0 1,510
3 Gonzaga 3-0 1,437
4 Virginia (2) 3-0 1,299
5 Tennessee (1) 3-0 1,281
6 Nevada 3-0 1,253
7 North Carolina 4-0 1,246
8 Auburn 3-0 1,123
9 Michigan 5-0 1,021
10 Kentucky 3-1 9

Whatever floats your boat.

@circuitrider University of Richmond is not rural and not really a LAC.

Number of Rhodes Scholarship winners is going to be really different for schools of 5,000 students vs 20,000 students. You should post percentage of students getting Rhodes, not numbers. You can’t compare colleges for graduate research projects if a college only has 500 graduates vs a college with 15,000 graduate students.

As far as NCCA rankings go, most colleges don’t participate but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy intramural sports there.

Niche is fine for its written reviews (by students) and a few other data points (its “students” tab shows breakdowns of republican vs. democrats on campus, racial/cultural numbers, etc). However, its ranking system is absurd, and this is saying a lot, considering I find most of rankings silly. But Niche’s are all over the place.

For instance, Coe College in Iowa is a nice school. It never gets mentioned on this site, of course, but it’s a good, solid LAC. Augustana (the one in IL) is a good comp for Coe C. Coe’s Overall Niche grade: A- (Academics: A-). Augustana’s Overall Niche grade: A- (Academics: A-)

Wow, impressive! How about Luther College or Gustavus Adolphus, two very nice Lutheran LACs? Luther’s Overall Niche grade: A. Gustavus’s Overall Niche grade: A.

Wow, nice! Luther and Gustavus have the same overall scores as Oberlin and Scripps.

Centre College? B+ Other B+ schools: Bard, Beloit, Sarah Lawrence, Earlham, Knox.

My point is not to nitpick rankings. After all, a student who cannot afford Oberlin can get an equal education at Beloit. Educationally, I do not see that much difference between most quality LACs.

Remember, though, that the Niche “rankings” fold in user data. I am all for a sustained, serious student surveys, but this is not what Niche does. Spend enough time on the Niche site and you see inconsistencies (Oberlin is, it turns out, the third-best LAC in Ohio!).

Niche also relies on auto-filling. Any school with an overall B+ ranking gets a generic description that reads, “Bard is an above-average private college located in Red Hook, New York.” Any school with an overall A- ranking gets this description: “Coe is a highly rated private, Christian college located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa” or “St. Norbert is a highly rated private, Catholic college located in De Pere, Wisconsin.” Bard’s USN ranking: #56. Coe’s USN ranking: #124. St. Norbert’s USN ranking: #127.

I hate even sharing the ranking numbers because they’re silly, but why one would pay attention to Niche’s absurd grading scheme?

“Number of Rhodes Scholarship winners is going to be really different for schools of 5,000 students vs 20,000 students.”

Are you saying that schools with greater student population produce more Rhodes Scholars? The top Rhodes Scholarship producing school, Harvard, only has 6,655 undergrad students. Yale 5,746, Princeton 5,394, Stanford 7,056, respectively.

^All of the top 10 Rhodes recipients Private Colleges has between 4,000-7,000 undergrads with the exception of Cornell at 15,000. Also given that Rhodes started in 1902 (and these are ranked cumulatively) newer schools are disadvantaged.

Maybe suburban is more accurate. TBH, Richmond, the city, isn’t much bigger than Springfield MA.

Where IS this thread going? Train to nowhere, imo. Niche?

What the hooey is a well-rounded college? (Don’t answer, I saw that they’re trying to label schools that give one ev-ery-thing. Of course, not all those offer great fin aid to ev-ery-body.

Seems like a fluff piece, to me.

Carry on.

“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.”

It may have some value, but you need to do some digging into the methodology as with any ranking. It does favor schools with good academics and athletics, Stanford, UMich, Duke, NU, Vandy as you mentioned. I think the more interesting thing and probably why they published are the schools left out - MIT, Cal Tech, JHU.