Interesting question!

Applying to College
1

<p>What is the difference between the top 20 colleges in the US???</p>

2

<p>?
Do you mean what are the differences between the top 20 colleges in the US?</p>

<p>I am not trying to correct your grammar, but that would clarify the question a bit.</p>

3

<p>Yeah…I’m not understanding the question…and it’s usually the Top 25, not 20.</p>

4

<p>Sorry for the the ambiguity</p>

<p>I made this thread in a hurry.</p>

<p>Yes indeed, I meant what are the differences between the top colleges in the USA? (top20/25)</p>

5

<p>There are so many differences…some are big some are small, some are public some are private, some have higher acceptance rates than others, some have great athletics while others don’t…the list goes on and on.</p>

6

<p>but why is one ranked higher than another…</p>

<p>are the differences that significant?</p>

7

<p>It depends on what the criteria are.</p>

<p>If someone decide to rank colleges based on their age, then I suppose the differences are not significant.</p>

<p>You’re probably talking about the US News stuff. </p>

<p>The difference between Harvard(#1) and Yale (#3) are not as significant as between Princeton (#1) and UCLA (#25). Resources, class sizes, student/faculty ratio (5/1 vs 18/1), alumni giving (as an indicator of happiness? success?) are somewhat significant differences.</p>

8

<p>Let us assume the US news rankings</p>

9

<p>What isn’t different? Probably none of the schools have a single quality that is exactly the same as another school. Even if the differences are only marginal, they’re all different in every aspect: class size, faculty, admission rate, department strength, alumni giving, research opportunities, sports teams, etc.</p>

<p>You’ll have to be more specific with your question, because literally everything is different about them, aside from similarities virtually all colleges have (like, for example, they all probably teach English. Although even that will obviously be different at every school).</p>

10

<p>Perhaps this link to U.S. News & World Report College Rankings for 2006 will help:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/about/weight_brief.php[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/about/weight_brief.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;