<p>beginning -- they claim that dickinson college has the best college library. and for 'students happy with financial aid', harvard isn't on the list even though it has the largest university endowment! harvard is one of the most generous universities around. i may be a bit biased because my brother went there, but the fact is when he applied to college harvard offered to pay for his full tuition while other colleges (including columbia, dartmouth, and cornell) didn't give him a dime and yale gave him one third of harvard's offer.</p>
<p>i'm sure many of the other rankings are faulty based on the way they find these rankings - they survey students from each school. there is no objective outsider evaluating each school on its own. one school may have higher rankings than another simply because that school's student body has more school spirit. the rankings are fun to look at but basing college choices on them would be a grave mistake so i hope princeton review's readers don't do that!</p>
<p>Dickinson's a pretty notable LAC; I've actually toyed with applying there. In addition to having a terrific library, they also have a rare manuscript collection that's available for viewing, including some from the 1400s, if I remember correctly.</p>
<p>What they might have held against Harvard is the fact that so many of their books are not available for reading, much less checking out. It's kinda like Beinecke -- it's really exciting, until you realize you can't even get behind the glass to see half the books up close. It's obviously really important to preserve the rarer books, but they shouldn't be counted as part of the library's total collection when it comes to what students can actually check out.</p>
<p>also, because most of the rankings are determined by surveying actual college students, dickinson students may have given their library a particularly high ranking because they like the atmosphere, too. i'm guessing that there are a number of factors students consider other than # of volumes.</p>
<p>Yes the fact that students of the school are the ones evaluating skews the rankings because students at different schools are more or less likely to be critical depending on their expectations and societies expectations.</p>
<p>I prefer the rankings to be from someone looking outside in versus inside out. just more objective that way</p>