What are the best universities in the eastern U.S.?
Can include Ivy leagues, and others.
The best universities for what field(s) of study? Or for what attributes?
In terms of overall breadth and depth of academics and selectivity, the following are generally considered the best on the east coast.
New Hampshire – Dartmouth
Massachusetts – Harvard, MIT, Boston U, Brandeis, Boston College, Tufts, Northeastern, Clark, WPI
Rhode Island – Brown
Connecticut – Yale
New York – Cornell, Columbia, NYU, Fordham, U Rochester, RPI, Syracuse
Pennsylvania – Penn, Pitt, Penn State, CMU, Lehigh
New Jersey – Princeton
Maryland – Johns Hopkins, U Maryland
Virginia – UVA, W&M, VT
North Carolina – Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, Wake Forest
South Carolina – Clemson
Georgia – Emory, UGA, Georgia Tech
Florida – UF, U Miami
I probably forgot a couple. Some of the states above have some very respectable public universities I didn’t include (FSU, College of Charleston, U Mass-Amherst, UNH, U Delaware, Macaulay Honors/CUNY, etc.).
Of course, a college is not necessarily the best FOR YOU even if it is the best in a particular ranking, and some lesser-known colleges have some extremely strong programs (e.g. hotel management at UNLV, oceanography at URI, classics at U Cincinnati, art history and conservation at U Delaware, etc.).
If you are just looking for a list, you can go to USN&WR. Many have issues with the rankings there but other lists are fairly similar.
One way to identify the best colleges would be to identify the ones that tend to attract the best students. In the “eastern United States” (that is, east of the Mississippi River) the 20 most selective research universities appear to be, in alphabetical order:
Brown
Carnegie Mellon
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
GA Tech
Georgetown
Harvard
JHU
MIT
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Penn
Princeton
Tufts
UChicago
UVA
Vanderbilt
Washington U
Yale
Depending on how you define and measure “most selective”, other contenders might include:
Brandeis, Case Western, Emory, Michigan, Northeastern, NYU, Rensselaer, Rochester, UI-UC, UMiami, UNC-CH, Wake Forest, William & Mary.
Of course, there are other possible criteria for identifying the “best”. For example, one could look at post-graduation student outcomes, or at faculty accomplishments. I like using admission selectivity, because:
(a) I have some faith (not absolute faith) in the collective wisdom of high-achieving students and their families, as reflected in their college choices
(b) selectivity is relatively easy to define and measure objectively
© this method seems to generate a plausible list of top universities
Nevertheless, you’d be well-advised to do your own in-depth research in light of your personal needs.
The above list does omit many excellent colleges (in particular, all LACs.)
I have known students who looked for the best college that allows cats in a freshman dorm, the best college with nearby horse facilities, the best college near great surfing, the best college with proximity to internships at news studios…not to mention the many, many students who have posted seeking the best parties or hottest students! Any list of “the best” has to be filtered through your own academic, financial, social and personal preferences.
It depends what your looking for. 
Dartmouth is a research school? Your joking right?
Why would you question Dartmouth being a research university. Of course it is. Is it an academic powerhouse compared to a school like Cornell? no. But it is certainly a research oriented university.
Dartmouth is not research focused university. It’s actually not a university, it’s a college.They don’t conduct research there. They have very little PhD programs. The professors have the lowest publication count of any school and a majority of there departments are not ranked and if so below 50-100’s.
Cornell IS a research university. THEY are a power house in hard and life sciences. THEY publish MANY papers and in top journals. There departments are ranked consistently in the top 30 in any major research category.
The two colleges should not be put in the same sentence with the word “research”.
Dartmouth is an UNDERGRAD college and a very good one. . But it’s NOT a research university. I don’t think they even have a medical school and if they do it will rank below among the top 100 medical schools.
I am a research scientist with a PhD. I know what research means, how its conducted and WHERE it is conducted. Dartmouth is a good college but ONLY a college, not a university. They have good faculty but not research faculty
Dartmouth does have a med school, ranked #37 by USNR. Dartmouth does conduct research (and lots of it). Dartmouth professors do publish (a lot). It’s very different from Cornell, to be sure, but I’m not really sure what you’re on about. If you’re “a research scientist with a PhD” you might want to brush up on “there/their,” comma splices, “little/few,” and pronoun/antecedent agreement. Researchers have to write as well, after all.
Also worth mentioning that while faculty productivity data is hard to come by (and usually proprietary/for sale), the 2013 Times Higher Education rankings put Dartmouth 126th worldwide for faculty publications. USNR also (rightly) categorizes Dartmouth as a “national university” rather than an LAC, and ranks Dartmouth’s Tuck Business School #9.
@jamesgorman @marvin100
Rather than rely on individual opinion, The Carnegie Classifications of Institutes of Higher Learning (now transferred from the Carnegie Foundation of Higher Learning to be administered by the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research) is the definitive authority on US classifications. And govt and rankings systems use those classifications. Needless to say it is put out by people who are have actual PhDs and know what research is.
Dartmouth College
RU/VH: Research Universities (very high research activity)
Carnegie Classifications used to have an R1 (Research 1) designation to classify those universities who receive the largest federal research funding, like Cornell, UW-Madison etc, but this designation was dropped from formal classification so as not to imply quality difference even though it is still used in common parlance. Dartmouth did not have that designation.
The Eastern United States? What are the boundaries? Do you include Western PA? Upstate New York? Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin? The Southeast?
What about LACs?
And best at what? Engineering? Business?
The list is potentially huge. In fact, I would estimate that it includes 80% of the top colleges and universities in the US.
Here’s a vague stab at it, considering the definition of the Eastern US (which extends as far North as Maine, south as Florida and West as Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi:
Elite Universities (some will argue whether all of those are “elite”…or “Eastern”, but they are all good…and considered Eastern by some measure)
Boston College
Brandeis University
Brown University
Carnegie Mellon University
Case Western Reserve University
College of William and Mary
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Emory University
Georgetown University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
New York University
Northwestern University
Princeton University
Tufts University
University of Chicago
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
University of Notre Dame
University of Pennsylvania
University of Rochester
University of Virginia
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Vanderbilt University
Wake Forest University
Washington University-St Louis
Yale University
Elite Colleges:
Amherst College
Barnard College
Bates College
Bowdoin College
Bryn Mawr College
Bucknell University
Carleton College
Colby College
Colgate University
College of the Holy Cross
Davidson College
Grinnell College
Hamilton College
Haverford College
Kenyon College
Macalester College
Middlebury College
Mount Holyoke College
Oberlin College
Smith College
Swarthmore College
University of Richmond
Vassar College
Washington & Lee University
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College
USNWR classifies Dartmouth as a “national university”.
Dartmouth’s Carnegie classification is “RU/VH: Research Universities (very high research activity)”.
It has a medical school.
It has a PhD-granting engineering school and an MBA-granting business school.
In addition to degree programs in those 3 schools, it has 27 other programs leading to master’s degrees or PhDs.
UNSWR ranks Dartmouth’s medical school #37 (tied) for research and #29 for primary care.
Dartmouth professors share research findings in peer-reviewed, academic journals.
Dartmouth PhD candidates share research findings in their dissertations.
In its 2015 national universities ranking, Washington Monthly ranks Dartmouth 24th for the number of faculty in national academies and 16th for the number of faculty receiving significant awards.
Dartmouth’s annual research expenditures (over $200M) exceed the annual research expenditures of many larger schools such as UMass-Amherst, Indiana-Bloomington, Northeastern, and Tufts.
On a per capita basis?
Can you cite a source for that?
So this poster is a HS sophomore from small town Wyoming, very small school elementary and HS together, no honors or AP classes, in Alg 1 this year and trying to learn about the college landscape, how it all works, if he can get into an Ivy etc. Interested in physics. @Azuriah when you post, if you tell a bit about why you are asking you can get info tailored to you a bit.
The US has a great wealth of excellent colleges. There are so many good ones that it is overwhelming. Try to understand that ‘the best’ is a concept you can personally tailor to ‘best for you’ and still have all the success, you don’t have to find and conquer some empirical best, you have to find where you will thrive and be successful instead. I recommend that you get a Fiske Guide to Colleges and that will let you read a page or two of over 300 excellent colleges and start to understand a bit about the similarities and differences. Or Get a Princeton Review Guide.
The main priority for you is to take a challenging program of study and supplement what your school is lacking and display some initiative in distinguishing yourself. You have been given some info on that in other threads. Also you have to get good SAT/ACT scores. Talk to your parents about what they are able to pay for college. Most people will have to make compromises because of cost. So getting the very best grades, doing a challenging study program and demonstrating your interests and commitments out of school can help you have more choices.
The best school is the one that’s best for YOU, not for someone else.
@marvin100: Why no mention of “your/you’re?” (10) Too obvious?
I respect the opinions of those on this thread, but for me the problem with college “best” lists is that the cut-off point often leads to arbitrary exclusions. For a longer list, within which you can draw your own line, as appropriate for you, try the Business Insider article, “The 610 Smartest Colleges in America.” A fairly uncommon aspect of the analysis is that it includes universities and LACs together, a clarifying feature for students who are considering both. (As with other lists, there may be many worthwhile colleges that are left off it.)
@warblersrule not really sure I’d mention Clark, in all honesty.