<p>Fresh from the Huffington Post today, yet another ranking (one I'm sure will fire up some full voiced rants):</p>
<p>The</a> 10 Most INTELLECTUAL Colleges (PHOTOS)</p>
<p>The Ten Most Intellectual Colleges</p>
<ol>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Carleton</li>
<li>Grinnell</li>
<li>Haverford</li>
<li>Macalester</li>
<li>Pomona</li>
<li>Reed </li>
<li>Swarthmore</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>Wesleyan</li>
</ol>
<p>8 LACs, 2 universities. Let the sparks fly....</p>
<p>Stupid list.</p>
<p>Found this comment about the list amusing, though:</p>
<p>From the Brown Daily Herald blog:</p>
<p>“Will this serve to cement Browns reputation as the douchiest school in America or, like so many college ranking lists, fall into obscurity, only to be picked up by overzealous high school students on College Confidential?”</p>
<p>Why I am I not surprised that the 10 most intellectual schools are also schools that are well-known, well-reputed, and on the U.S. News top 100 list? Actually I think all but Reed are in the top 50, and that’s just because Reed stopped submitting their information to the magazine.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that top schools aren’t top schools for a reason, but pretty much every ranking system I’ve seen either 1) echoes U.S. News with perhaps a slight reorganization or 2) envisions itself as the anti-U.S. News and does something “different” that’s really just the opposite of what U.S. News would do, thereby reflecting U.S. News anyway.</p>
<p>USNWR lumps everything together, making this magazine editors’ ranking one-size-fits-none. While still over broad, Most Intellectual is at least somewhat more specific, so perhaps a tiny bit useful.</p>
<p>Oberlin is just as intellectual as some of these.</p>
<p>
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<p>I agree with that. Still, the “most intellectual” list fairly closely tracks the list of undergrad institutions with the highest percentage of alums going on to earn Ph.D.s, with a few exceptions: the HuffPo “most intellectual” list omits science/tech-heavy schools like Caltech, Harvey Mudd and MIT; it omits a number of big Ph.D.-producing Ivies like Yale and Princeton; and it omits women’s schools like Bryn Mawr. Here are the top Ph.D.-producing undergrad schools for the 1995-2004 period:</p>
<ol>
<li> Caltech</li>
<li> Harvey Mudd</li>
<li> Swarthmore</li>
<li> Reed</li>
<li> MIT</li>
<li> Carleton</li>
<li> Oberlin</li>
<li> Bryn Mawr</li>
<li> University of Chicago</li>
<li>Grinnell</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Haverford</li>
<li>Pomona</li>
<li>Rice</li>
<li>Amherst</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>St. John’s (Annapolis)</li>
<li>Williams</li>
<li>Cleveland Institute of Music</li>
</ol>
<p>Still and all, including Carleton, Grinnell, Haverford, Pomona, Reed, Swarthmore, and the University of Chicago in the “10 most intellectual” list is not insensible, and it is doing far more than merely echoing the US News rankings. There is something distinctive about these schools. I’m not sure Brown, Wesleyan and Macalester are quite in that same category, though I can see some similarities. Oberlin, Bryn Mawr, Yale, and Princeton arguably belong in the same group. But that excludes a lot of the US News top 10 LACs and top 10 research universities. On the whole I rather like this ranking, though I’m not sure what methodology they used.</p>
<p>Great list from the HuffPo!</p>
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<p>Me neither, but it’s not really a ranking. It’s just an alphabetically ordered list.</p>
<p>The list is from the u ni go website and is just based on students’ comments, primarily focused on how much kids like to discuss ideas outside the classroom and love to learn and study.</p>
<p>Wow. What a scientific source of the data.</p>
<p>How would you ‘scientifically’ determine the most ‘intellectual’ colleges?</p>
<p>“I’m not saying that top schools aren’t top schools for a reason, but pretty much every ranking system I’ve seen either 1) echoes U.S. News with perhaps a slight reorganization or 2) envisions itself as the anti-U.S. News and does something “different” that’s really just the opposite of what U.S. News would do, thereby reflecting U.S. News anyway.”</p>
<p>It sounds like you’re the one comparing everything to US News. Are you fixated on it a bit too much perhaps?</p>
<p>Not a bad list, but any list like this that doesn’t include St. John’s College looks wrong.</p>
<p>Based on Wikipedia
</p>
<p>So, does this list makes those students in HPYMS less intellectual? Are they all dummys? How could a school like that attain the top elites in America?</p>
<p>What a stupid listing!</p>
<p>Brown as #1 makes no sense at all, especially considering that Brown does not make the top 25 list of schools whose alumni go on to earn Ph.D.s.</p>
<p>Brown is #1 because B comes before C (as tk pointed out). :)</p>
<p>“So, does this list makes those students in HPYMS less intellectual? Are they all dummys? How could a school like that attain the top elites in America?”</p>
<p>Just think of it as all schools not having the same intellectual level. America on the whole doesn’t measure schools’ value by intellectual level; it’s just one of many features.</p>
<p>“So, does this list makes those students in HPYMS less intellectual? Are they all dummys? How could a school like that attain the top elites in America?”</p>
<p>How do you jump from “not being on a list of top intellectual colleges” to “they are all dummys”? People really take lists far too seriously and draw ridiculous conclusions from them. It’s not “these are the only intellectual colleges and all others are nonintellectual.” Besides, many of the schools on that list also attain those so-called “top elites.” The list simply reflects the data source it was derived from, which has to be taken into account when evaluating any sort of listing. Rankings aren’t absolutes handed down by some god, they are subjective interpretations of subjective data and should not be evaluated without context.</p>
<p>as mentioned before, this list is alphabetical. Brown is not #1. and also mentioned before, this list is subjective just like every other college ranking list. I love it when people get so obsessed over every little ranking. it’s an opinion people. not fact.</p>
<p>Say what you want about the list, but the methodology has more credibility than US News and World Report.</p>
<p>I get a kick out of these lists, but don’t take them too seriously…</p>
<p>As an intellectual, I agree with this list for the most part. I think most people’s bickering is caused by ignorance of what “intellectual” actually means.</p>
<p>The word “intellectual” has explicitly little to do with intellectual capacity (although there is quite clearly a correlation), but rather has much to do with the idea of “learning for the sake of learning.” So Chicago is a shoo-in on this list for being a very well-known university, unique for emphasizing the “life of the mind,” whereas Harvard could never be on such a list for its inevitably pre-professional nature. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t intellectuals at Harvard (as there obviously are), but that Chicago has a much higher percentage of them. This is indicated by the fact that Chicago produces more people going into academia than Harvard.</p>
<p>So this list doesn’t measure “which students are the smartest” as some people seem to think. It’s simply a measure of which schools emphasize the development of the individual through a liberal arts curriculum, and indeed have that as their end.</p>