<p>I’m really unsure of what I’m going to major in, so I’m looking for schools that have a variety of excellent programs. I know Princeton has a reputation as the best overall for undergrads, but I was wondering what other schools have a good overall program that is strong in many different areas. Currently, I think I might focus on any of these areas: International Relations, Biology, Law, or Business.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Yale is supposedly awesome for IR and Bio.</p>
<p>according to princeton review, the title of best all around academic experience belongs to Reed.</p>
<p>Stanford (ten char)</p>
<p>Harvard and Stanford are strong in almost every area. The exception is maybe Harvard Engineering which is relatively weak, but that’s still a top 15-20 program.</p>
<p>Most of the top-25 schools will suit you fine. Most will have the majors you list and they will generally have very highly ranked programs to boot.</p>
<p>you’re really splitting hairs looking at the academic strength of schools of this calibur, but Yale would probably be the top for IR and all of the typical majors that feed into law. Biology would be Harvard or Stanford. Business could go a whole lot of different ways depending on what area of business - finance is probably UPenn, anything heavily quantitative you’re looking at MIT, etc… but this is less all-round. If you consider Economics to be a part of business, then Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, UChicago are all stellar all-around programs.</p>
<p>Top schools all around…the Ivy League schools, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Chicago…
Add more, there are many great schools in all fields without an overly technical focus (MIT, CIT - great schools but techy focus)</p>
<p>I would add the great publics to the list of schools that are excellent all-around. Among them:</p>
<p>University of California-Berkeley
University of California-Los Angeles (no undergraduate Business)
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (no Engineering)
University of Texas-Austin
University of Virginia
University of Wisconsin-Madison</p>
<p>You’ll be hard-pressed to find a school with strengths in a wider variety of areas than Cornell. Any of the top LACs would also fit.</p>
<p>Although it is stereotyped as having a “techy focus”, MIT is quite strong in a variety of areas and has top programs in political science, management, linguistics, philosophy, and economics, in addition to its obviously stellar science and engineering programs.</p>
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<p>What you should be really looking for then is not just schools that have a variety of excellent programs, but those that have a variety of programs THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY SWITCH INTO. It doesn’t matter if your school has the greatest program in the world in X if you’re not actually going to be allowed to major in X because the school already has too many students in that major. </p>
<p>And the fact is, a lot of schools place restrictions on which students can switch around. If you go to Penn CAS, you can’t just wake up one fine day and simply decide to switch to Wharton to study business. If you want to switch to Wharton you actually have to apply to switch over, and this application is by no means guaranteed. The same thing is true at Berkeley with Haas and many other schools.</p>
<p>Sakky, most elite universities allow pretty flexible manoeuvering from college to college. I am not sure about Cal, but with the exception of their B-schools, universities like Cornell, Michigan and Penn have guaranteed transfer policies, provided the student can cope with the switch.</p>
<p>“And the fact is, a lot of schools place restrictions on which students can switch around. If you go to Penn CAS, you can’t just wake up one fine day and simply decide to switch to Wharton to study business. If you want to switch to Wharton you actually have to apply to switch over, and this application is by no means guaranteed.”</p>
<p>This seems to be VERY true for many universities.</p>
<p>The best schools in terms of “reputation” where you can major in english and still get an awesome job are the Ivies, top LACs, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, etc.</p>
<p>Well Stanford places absolutely no restritions. You only declare your major at the end of Sophmore and I’m pretty sure even after that switching wouldn’t be too hard.</p>
<p>Does Stanford have more than one undergraduate school? If it does not, this is nothing that is not done at other schools.</p>
<p>Stanford has 3 undergrad schools: Earth Sciences, Engineering and Humanities and Sciences</p>
<p>ETA: They also teach grad of course</p>
<p>i am finding myself totally agreeing with superwizard.</p>
<p>techie - programs: MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Berkely
non-techies : HYPS</p>
<p>for overall all-around academics, Stanford is the place to go for undergraduate.</p>
<p>For Ph.D though, Harvard and Berkeley each has a slight upper hand over Stanford in terms of all-around academic strengths.</p>
<p>“For Ph.D though, Harvard and Berkeley each has a slight upper hand over Stanford in terms of all-around academic strengths.”</p>
<p>This is nonsense. There is nothing that makes a PhD from Harvard or Berkeley better than one from Stanford, nothing at all.</p>