<p>The</a> 50 Best Colleges & Universities 2011-2012 Top School Rankings</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Swarthmore</li>
<li>MIT</li>
</ol>
<p>Woo.</p>
<p>I more or less agree with their top ten (not necessarily in the same order), but who is the organization that compiled this list (if it’s to have any cred)?</p>
<p>The methodology doesn’t seem half bad to me if you read it. I like that they included cost of living in the area. I know that played a huge factor in my sister’s dislike of Columbia which obviously has an insanely high cost of living.</p>
<p>There are so many of these rankings out there. Individually I don’t think that they mean much. Each one has its own methodology and seems to emphasize something different. But taken together, certain trends can be seen. For example, the top LACs always seem to be Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams and Pomona (although the order changes from one ranking to another). I think that tells you something. Just like the top universities are almost always HYPS.</p>
<p>The rankings do mean something, but it’s important for high school students not to think that there’s a huge difference in the academic quality of schools in, say, the top 20 or 30. There are differences in the atmosphere of these colleges, but you shouldn’t think that if you go to MIT, you’ll be worse off than if you went to Swarthmore. MIT is much stronger than Swat in certain things. It doesn’t really make sense to try to reduce all these factors into a single ranking. So rankings can be useful, but they should be taken for what they are.</p>