<p>No, I am not a student at BC, and I only brought it up twice. Yes, there is a number of colleges on that list that BC is certainly on par with, like Wake Forest and UNC. I don’t quite see that Tufts is qualitatively better. I think its splitting hairs to put one over the other.</p>
<p>Of course, both of them labor under the formidable shadows of H and MIT, as do BU and Northeastern. I sometimes wonder if that fact has spurred those colleges on to greater quality than may be recognized by the ranking gurus. I wouldn’t be suprised. Is there another city/area where one or two dominant schools have such an overbearing presence?</p>
<p>Glad you agree on Bates, Colby and Hamilton.</p>
<p>I notice that of your top 40 schools, 39 (all but Rice) are on the California coast or east of the Mississippi (well, WUSTL is at the river). Interesting how half the country geographically does not have an elite school.</p>
<p>Princeton U - Best university in the mid-Atlantic
Harvard U (MIT?) - Best university in New-England
Stanford - Best in the west coast
Duke U - Best in the South east
Rice U - Best in the South west
Northwestern U - Best in the Mid-west
[File:US</a> 9 regions.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_9_regions.svg]File:US”>File:US 9 regions.svg - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>^ Chardo, if you are referring to my list of 40, you are correct. According to that list, half the country does not have an “elite” (rich, highly selective) university. There are good historical and geographical reasons why.</p>
<p>After the Civil War, the Land-Grant Acts spurred the founding of public universities in the West, for example the University of Nebraska in 1869. However, the only “elite” private universities I can think of W. of the Mississippi (even in CA) are Stanford and USC. There also are very few selective LACs between the Western coastal states and the Mississippi River states.</p>
<p>I usually refrain from commenting in threads about rankings/prestige (since it can vary depending on how one looks at things) unless things are a bit out of wack.</p>
<p>In this case, the pedestal in which some people seem to place Georgetown.</p>
<p>Now, Georgetown is a very good school and reknowned for a no. of things - most notably its international affairs/studies program, law school and men’s BB program.</p>
<p>But when you look at objective criteria such as dept. ranking in the top/most pop. college majors and the strength of the student body, Georgetown falls short compared to what some regard as GU’s peers, much less schools deemed to be below GU.</p>
<p>For instance, not only does ND have more “academic prestige” (overall strength of academic depts.), ND also has an overall stronger student body (granted, I haven’t looked at the most recent nos., so things may have changed).</p>
<p>Basically, GU is seen to be higher than it really should be due to its fairly low admissions rate (19% or so), but that’s largely due to it being a very good school that also located in a large metro area that close to the NE (which produces the largest no. of top students).</p>
<p>Basically, the same benefit geographic-wise UVA gets over a school like UMich.</p>
<p>And despite such admissions rate, the GPA/scores of GU’s student body is not as high as NDs or that of a good no. of schools (either deemed to be its peers or below).</p>
<p>An often overlooked school with a 24% acceptance rate, and a student SAT range that puts it about 30th is Tulane University. It has outstanding academics and few courses taught by TAs, and small class sizes. Prior to Katrina, its USNWR rankings but it in the 30s. The more I learned of the school the more impressive it became.</p>
<p>Why is Boston College in the second tier and Georgetown and Notre Dame in the first tier. I think the latter two might be more popular, but are they actually better schools than BC?</p>
<p>How do you define best? Highest percentage of undergrads attaining PhDs? Grinnell is in the top ten in the country for that. Vocational success? Grinnell produced Robert Noyce, co-inventor of the printed circuit (microchip) and co-founder of Intel; Thomas Czech, Nobel laureate in Chemistry; Harry Hopkins, one of the driving forces for the Roosevelt’s New Deal; Herbie Hancock, famous jazz musician to name a few. I am sure there are many other very fine colleges with successful grads. Any list of the top forty or fifty is fun for conversation, but will never be acknowledged as 100% accurate. My commercial for Grinnell is based upon my son attending and afterwards being offered fellowships to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the University of Michigan. He was declined by Berkeley, Cornell, Princeton, and Columbia. There are many paths to a student’s goal.</p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_9_regions.svg]File:US](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_9_regions.svg%5DFile:US){kind=link}
