What are the top 30 schools in your opinion?
And what are the minimum requirements (GPA, rigor, SAT/ACT) to have your app make the first cut (assuming no hooks of any kind)?
Also, Merry Christmas!
I think you need to do your own homework but I would start at Forbes Top Colleges 2020 list if rankings is important to you.
With that said, I would look at which major(s) interest you and determine best programs for your career goals keeping in mind best fit financially, academically, and socially.
I would assume that everyone would have these schools on their list of top 30:
- Harvard
- Yale
- Princeton
- Stanford
- MIT
- Caltech
- UPenn
- Columbia
- Dartmouth
- Cornell
- Brown
- Duke
- Johns Hopkins
- Northwestern
- U Chicago
- Vanderbilt
- Wash U St. Louis
- Rice
- Notre Dame
Yes, fit is very important. Was just curious what other posters valued for their top 30 schools (as a fun exercise). I would personally put UCLA, UC Berkeley, UMichigan, USC in the top 20 due to fit, geographical location, research, sports, etc…
It will somewhat dependent on what you plan to study. Like the top 30 engineering schools would be a much different list. Though I would put Ga Tech and UVA as some of the publics in a top 30 list.
This list is a ranking of private school prestige not universities by academic quality. Undergrad prestige fades quickly after college…
I know what your asking but I think you have to go by major and interest.
We had 38 schools on our master list for engineering for my son . Many were the same but many were not. We were looking for a combination of excellence, affordability, fit, positive social environment, strong alumni, sports. Take out sports for my daughter and switch it with theater /arts and overall safety for campus for both kids
So our top 30 list depending on Child would look very different since my daughter only looked at Lacs. My son looked at everything beside Lacs.
What I did notice for my son was that 33/34 Act seemed to be the sweet point. 3.75 unweighted GPA and above with 4-6 AP’s also seemed to be what schools were looking for. Rigor in math and science but challenging yourself in your weaker subjects. This was the “eye test” when seeing results of acceptances.
I suggest thinking about it from the perspective of what are the top schools for YOU.
Major / minor
Part of the country (where you want to explore and/or see yourself living after college)
Overall fit (size, culture, etc.)
You’ll find there are tons of great schools out there, but they may not all be good for you. As an example, S was looking for great UG business schools. There are lots of them. However, he didn’t want to be in the city, wanted to be on the east coast, wanted a certain size school, etc. Still lots of schools fit his list and he applied accordingly. Generically, you could ask him “why didn’t you apply to Michigan or Berkeley , or Notre Dame, etc.”. They didn’t make HIS list. So define your list and then start looking for the top rated schools (based on whatever is important to you) within that universe.
Engineering, business and other pre-professional majors are a confounding factor when it comes to ranking American institutions of higher learning. Some top universities like UPenn emphasize the more practical side of learning while others, like Princeton, have tended to emphasize the theoretical sciences. Liberal arts colleges (LACs) have a long track record of preparing people for jobs in science, industry, and politics with almost no preprofessional courses. Bottom line: Hard to come up with a list of just 30 colleges or universities that wouldn’t have major omissions.
There are plenty of corporations like US News and Forbes that offer their own rankings of US schools based on criteria they believe determines a school’s quality. If their rankings are important to you (and that’s ok), then they are only a google search away.
But as others have mentioned, it’s far more important to consider what matters to you. Also, few schools have minimum requirements for GPA or scores, but another quick google search can show you each schools average GPA and SAT/ACT.
Top 30 schools for what?
Sure, the schools listed above have a broad array of majors and capabilities that would “rank” highly in a ranking intended for college administrators.
For an aeronautical engineering major, Embry-Riddle, unlikely to be on anyone’s “generic best schools” list and a #11 regional university at USNews, would be much better than Brown, USN’s #14 national school.
For HS students, generic rankings are near meaningless.
This.
Our son was stat-competitive for any school in the country, but chose a service academy for engineering. Obviously, his goals narrowed his preferences to schools not even on your unimaginative list, but he received an outstanding education that went well beyond a sound engineering education.
What does ANYone’s opinion of the top N school matter to you? What do you possibly hope to derive from random Internet opinions on such a silly question?