I agree with ucbalumnus and lookingforward that you need to do your own assessment, everyone’s situation is different. What are you looking for in a college? What are the most important factors to you? For example, for my S, we determined that rigorous academic offerings and outcomes in his chosen field are the two most important factors. The other ones are secondary and tertiary, and only used to break ties. Because he was sure of his interest in CS, we never looked into chemistry. In CS, we would have ranked Cornell and Princeton at the top among the Ivy League, [i ]for him[/i ]. We also looked into the engineering schools within these two universities because of their CS associations. We found Princeton has its strength in financial engineering (not a traditional engineering discipline, but relevant to CS) and Cornell stronger in more traditional engineering disciplines. My S, BTW, didn’t go to either one of them (and didn’t even apply to one of them). He chose a non-Ivy school instead. But that’s another story.