My Ranking of the Best Undergrad Experience

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Okay so all of the top 20 schools offer an excellent education. In the end it really should just come down to cost of attendance and personal fit, as it dosent really matter wether you attend Harvard or WUSTL - if you work hard, network, and excel, you will find yourself with a good job; however if you slack off and get bad grades, you won't have as good of a job. People here on CC get all stuck on numbers (rankings) but forget that fit is important. So I thought I would rank the schools in order of attractiveness for overall experience. Only the top 20 privates will be considered, because the publics are just on a completely different realm than the small intimate privates. Remember we are assuming that one who excels at Rice will do better than an average kid at Harvard. Forget about prestige.</p>

<p>Criteria</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Location: Is it a good college town? Is it in a big city? Essentially are there things to do, are there lots of bars, access to live music/concerts? Or is it in the middle of nowhere. </p></li>
<li><p>Weather: Who wants to walk to class in a foot of snow? Plus girls in short shorts and dresses.. yes please.</p></li>
<li><p>Sports: D1 sports... yes or no</p></li>
<li><p>Social life: frats, parties,</p></li>
<li><p>Stereotypical kid: preppy, awkward, nerd, attractive kids.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Now the moment you have all been waiting for. Assuming that all of the top 20 schools offer close to equal academics as long as one works hard... The best schools are.</p>

<ol>
<li>Stanford: Great weather, great sports. Social life is alright. It may be the </li>
<li>Duke: Nice NC weather. Dosen't get much better than Duke basketball. Duke attracts smart, but fun kids. Aren't; overly intellectual (nerdy/ weird).</li>
<li>Vanderbilt: Great weather. Nashville is an amazing town with alot to do. SEC sports. Some of the hottest girls in the country. Big party school - work hard play hard atmosphere. Avg ACT of 32-34 yet the students can hang with any state school when it comes to raging. </li>
<li>Notre Dame: Bad Weather, but Notre Dame football is amazing. Its Catholic so that a downer but the football brings it up. </li>
<li>Northwestern: D1 sports</li>
<li>HYP</li>
<li>Columbia: NYC</li>
<li>Rice/Emory/Wash U: Great weather, and all in big cities. Weird kids
9: All the other ivies.</li>
</ol>

2

<p>How can a type of student be a criteria? Are you saying that just because a school attracts “preppy” that means it is worse than a school that attracts “nerd” (or vise versa). </p>

<p>You can’t rank undergraduate experience, someone who would enjoy being at Notre Dame may not enjoy being at Stanford.</p>

3

<p>So basically you’re imposing your own values into this ranking? I mean, what makes you think everyone likes being in the middle of a city or that everyone hates snow (by the way, I hate hot weather)? This ranking is useless.</p>

4

<p>I can assure you that a student who finds Cal Tech an intellectual paradise would despise Emory and vice versa. Also not all of us want D1 sports or think frats are god’s gift to man kind.</p>

5

<p>You need to go where you feel most comfortable at!!</p>

6

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<p>Some of the OP’s criteria would be factors causing schools to fall off the consideration list for my guys…</p>

<p>I thought I had seen all sorts of bad rankings. This is a new low if it’s meant to apply to all and not just the OP.</p>

7

<p>

</p>

<p>“Small intimate privates”? You consider a campus with 23,000 students (Columbia) “small and intimate”? Cornell and Johns Hopkins have over 21,000 apiece; Harvard, Stanford, and Northwestern nearly 20,000 apiece, Penn over 19,000. Granted, their undergraduate student bodies are smaller, but some not so small: Cornell has over 14,000 undergrads–more than Georgia Tech, nearly as many as UVA, and far more than William & Mary. Penn has nearly 10,000; Notre Dame about 8,500. In my book, LACs are small and intimate. These are, at best, medium-sized to large undergraduate student colleges, some housed within large or very large universities. </p>

<p>As for the OP’s criteria: for both of my daughters, “party school” was a strong negative, as was active Greek scene (and the two often go hand in hand). They are not against sports, but “big-time sports” was a net negative. Especially for D2, anyplace without 4 distinct seasons including a winter with snow was definitely out, and anyplace that could be hot in September or May (e.g., Houston, Atlanta, Nashville, Durham) was double-out on that independent ground, as she can’t stand high heat; in short, her weather preferences are diametrically opposed to the OP’s. As for “small and intimate,” that was a strong selling point for both my daughters, and one of the principal grounds on which they ruled out every school on the OP’s list in favor of leading LACs.</p>

<p>Bottom line, I don’t think the OP’s criteria tell us anything at all, except that the OP likes hot weather, big cities, wild parties, and big-time sports. Which is probably more than most of us needed to know.</p>

8

<p>Who are you, OP? What credentials qualify you to publicly offer this as a supposedly legitimate ranking? And, lastly, WHO CARES??? This is a truly ludicrous thread.</p>

9

<p>I like this idea, because someone who can get into Duke can probably get into Rice but these are pretty important factors to choosing a college.
These don’t exactly fit the criteria but they’re the top 7 that came to mind.

  1. UNC-chapel hill
  2. UCLA
  3. UCB
  4. Stanford
    5.Northwestern
  5. UVA
  6. MIT</p>
10

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<p>True, but actually, upon more thought, I’m voting ■■■■■ thread. Only 2 posts?
…</p>

<p>Edited to add - maybe not as I just read their other post. It does seem that the OP is just incredibly naive and assumes everyone feels as they do regarding fit. Carry on.</p>

11

<p>I promise, NC’s weather can be nice, but isn’t anything to brag about. And Duke kids, for the msot part, are pretty nerdy and weird. They’re bright kids, but there’s a lot of nerds. I’ve grown up in Durham and around Duke, so I know…</p>

12

<p>Nerds are awesome! Trust me on this one. Duke wants nerds to attend (and all universities need nerds in order to be successful).</p>

13

<p>Hmm. You start with disingenuous caveats about the problems with rankings, then proceed to rank schools (top 20 only, of course, because anyplace below is unworthy. Top 20 according to whom?) based on the criterion of “attractiveness of overall experience”, an utterly subjective measure? </p>

<p>So silly, dude.</p>

14

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<p>Middle son’s #1 school jumped to that spot when we were on a tour and saw a handmade sign in a dorm that said, “We’re not nerds. We’re intellectual bada__es.” Dominant Greek turned him off and cut schools. Sports were a non-factor in theory, but too many students talking about sports vs academics or other forms of entertainment certainly wasn’t a plus…</p>

<p>Students are different and each does best when they find their own fit. There is no national ranking for this - among Top 20 or otherwise. Having 100 schools in the Top 20 nationally sounds about right (mentioned in another thread) - with the actual 20 selected depending upon the student.</p>

15

<p>Didn’t say that was bad, but thats what it is.</p>

16

<p>These are your own artificial rankings. I have absolutely no comment.</p>