<p>"That list is not adjusted for the size of the undergrad population at each school. For example, Oberlin, Smith, and Wesleyan are all double the size of some of the smaller schools on the list.</p>
<p>One thing I’ve noticed is that, if you go back further in history (pre-1970), many of the women’s colleges were at the very top of the list, presumably because there were so few top undergrad options for academically talented women."</p>
<p>Tis true, though there are other adjustments that could be made, equally important to size: the number of students who went to professional schools (taking them out of the Ph.D. schools); the wealth of the student population; the number of older students; and, which affects the women’s school’s most, the number of Ed.D.s (not counted here), or terminal degrees in social work, also not counted here. Size does matter, but it is neither the only adjustment that can be made, nor necessarily the most important. (I did find a list which made those adjustments, which I can’t put my hands on now, but it found Bryn Mawr far and away the best school in the country based on post-grad placements.)</p>
<p>None of these schools are chopped liver, of course, and choosing between them on this basis is probably not a very sensible activity. One wonders (or at least I wonder), though, to what degree the schools are responsible for the students’ successes in these realms, or whether those successes are more a result of the quality of the student body (and its wealth) upon entry. I have no doubt that any attempt to factor these out would result in a very different “value-added” list, with Kalamazoo, Hope, St. Olaf’s (high on the lists in either case), Earlham, Beloit, Bryn Mawr, and Grinnell being the “best” schools in the country.</p>