hawkette

It’s always fun to read how others rank colleges, but I am often left scratching my head at some of the choices and I wonder what the individual methodology was for some of these. For my own list, I’m likewise sure that there are a few rankings, up and down, that will startle (some were even surprises to me!).

I am most interested in which colleges provide the best undergraduate experience for their students, in and out of the classroom. For instance, I believe that, for undergraduate students, the classroom teaching experience is far more important than the research reputation of a school. I also think what happens outside of the classroom can be very important in measuring the full undergraduate experience.

I based my rankings on a combination of factors:

40% USNWR Ranking
30% USNWR Classroom Teaching Ranking
25% Social Life ranking drawn from input on previous CC threads
5% Athletic Life ranking as measured by 2007 Directors Cup standings

Here are the scores for each UNDERGRADUATE college and their ranks:

Rank, Score, College

1 , 3.7 , Stanford
2 , 6.85 , Duke
3 , 7.55 , Princeton
4 , 12.25 , Yale
5 , 12.65 , Dartmouth
6 , 12.65 , Notre Dame
7 , 12.95 , Brown
8 , 13.35 , Harvard
9 , 13.75 , Northwestern
10 , 14.1 , Rice
11 , 14.15 , U Penn
12 , 14.25 , Vanderbilt
13 , 14.4 , U Virginia
14 , 17.6 , UC Berkeley
15 , 17.7 , U Chicago
16 , 17.8 , Cornell
17 , 18.2 , Caltech
18 , 18.5 , Columbia
19 , 18.6 , U North Carolina
20 , 18.85 , UCLA
21 , 18.95 , U Michigan
22 , 19.8 , USC
23 , 20.4 , Wake Forest
24 , 20.65 , Wash U
25 , 20.7 , Emory
26 , 20.8 , MIT
27 , 22.95 , Georgetown
28 , 22.95 , Boston Coll
29 , 23.1 , Johns Hopkins
30 , 24.75 , U Wisconsin