<p>why does it really matter? US News is a high school thing, honestly.</p>
<p>Although still somewhat problematic, tiers make alot more sense than a strict numeric ranking. E.g. HYP/SWA/Stanford/MIT/CalTech being a possible top tier, etc. One cannot meaningfully make qualitative distinctions within such a tier, even though these schools will be different fits for different students.</p>
<p>The elite schools in New England/Northeast are considered by those who boast intelligence as: Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Williams, Amherst </p>
<p>Remember, ranking is NOT EVERYTHING. Nonetheless, I find it interesting and amusing. So here goes:</p>
<p>Princeton
Harvard
Yale
MIT
Stanford
Williams
U Chicago
Amherst
Duke/Columbia
UPenn
Dartmouth
Swarthmore
Brown
Berkeley
Cornell
Northwestern</p>
<p>Wouldn't Pomona be up there with WSA?</p>
<p>If you're basing it on academic reputation and longstanding prestige (which US News is, essentially), I don't think Pomona or even Swarthmore for that matter are in the same tier as Williams and Amherst.</p>
<p>I think it's best to rank by tiers. How can one really distinguish between Harvard and Yale or Amherst and Williams without isolating specific strengths (e.g. Harvard>Yale in math)?
1. Harvard/Princeton/Yale
2. MIT/Caltech
3. Williams/Amherst
4. Duke/UChicago/Dartmouth/Cornell/Penn/Columbia/Harvey Mudd
6. WashU/Pomona/Swarthmore/Wellesley/Northwestern/Johns Hopkins/Brown
and so on..</p>
<p>That's how I would rank overall prestige/academic reputation, but my personal opinion on the best undergraduate education would be:
1. Princeton/Yale
2. Williams/Amherst
3. Caltech/Harvey Mudd
4. Dartmouth/Swarthmore</p>
<p>(Notice that Harvard is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps as a Yalie I am a TAD biased. But really, it's a horrid place for undergrad study! :p )</p>
<p>If you're talking undergraduate education:
1) Swarthmore
2) Amherst
3) Princeton
4) Yale
5) Stanford
6) Williams
7) Harvard
8) U. Chicago
9) Pomona
10) Dartmouth</p>
<p>CalTech, MIT, Harvey Mudd would be in top 10, ezxcept are tech. "niche" schools as opposed to LAC/Arts and Sciences.</p>
<p>This is ridiculous. Swarthmore, Amherst, and Williams are pretty culturally different, but they have a very similar reputation and offer similarly excellent academic experience. It's great that everyone is having fun ranking schools, but these are patently ridiculous.</p>
<p>Stanford has a very similar reputation to Harvard and Yale as well, abl. I'd still hesitate to place them in the same tier in terms of reputation. And the fact that Williams/Amherst have both had the highest Peer Assessment scores since the inception of the US News rankings, each always placing higher than Swarthmore, isn't helping your point.</p>
<p>TellETuBe--my point is, as Dad2 pointed out, tiers are a much less misleading way to gauge schools than rankings. I'm not going to argue whether Stanford is better than Harvard or whether Swarthmore is better than Amherst largely because I think when you are talking about schools as academically and prestigiously similar as those, the word "better" loses most of its meaning. I would question your ranking of Harvey Mudd over Swarthmore and Pomona, but ultimately I don't think it matters; Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, MIT, CallTech...etc, etc are different enough schools with their own unique advantages and disadvantages that I think the practice of determining whether Swarthmore should be above Yale or vice versa will yield far less important information than discussing whether one might be better suited by the tech-heavy atmosphere of MIT and Harvey Mudd, the large range of opportunities offered by Stanford and Harvard, or the intimate learning environments of Swarthmore and Williams.</p>
<p>abl- you've hit the nail on the head (is Bach ranked higher than Mozart?).</p>
<p>Dad2: Well, yes, I have to say, he is!</p>
<p>I may agree, but we're spliiting hairs (after all, had Mozart lived another 30 years who knows?).</p>