Which ? Which ?
Emory ? Very diverse but very rich.
Ga State more likely …given where it is located and the population makeup nearby -draws in all ethnicities and likely not the wealthy on average.
Loyola NO ? SE La ? UL Monroe ?
Going Ga State and La Monroe
Your final Louisiana choice was not correct, but it was one of the ones you mentioned…
You did not mention the Georgia one, but @ECCA2026 or @Sweetgum would probably guess it pretty quickly.
Both are mentioned on this thread, too: 🏳️🌈 Happy Pride 2025! 🏳️🌈 POLL: What Are Some LGBTQ-Friendly Schools?
Agnes Scott and Loyola ? Agents Scott is one gender…not diverse. Loyola is mainly one religion - as in most the state.
I guess them bcuz they are the only in that survey from each state. Everyone defines differently.
Ding, ding, ding, ding ding, we have a winner!
I’m not 100% sure, but I’m pretty sure that Agnes Scott is pretty inclusive in terms of how it defines gender (i.e. born female at birth identifying as female, trans women, nonbinary, and maybe trans men…). I didn’t see a page for how they’re talking about gender, which might be part of how they’re being inclusive. And from its History page, emphasis added:
Agnes Scott College was established in 1889 with a distinctive mission: to educate women for the betterment of their families and the elevation of their region. Today, that mission has evolved into a commitment to educate students from around the world to “think deeply, live honorably and engage the intellectual and social challenges of their times.”
And the school is 40% white, 31% black, 14% Hispanic, 6% 2+ races, 5% Asian, 3% international, and 1% unknown, 40% are Pell Grant recipients, and 30% are formally registered with the office of disability services.
I’m not sure where you found the religious breakdown of students, but Loyola does have a Muslim Student Association, some organizations for the Jewish student community, as well as non-Catholic Christian organizations.
But beyond that, it’s 45% white, 21% Hispanic, 20% Black, 5% 2+ races, 4% international, 3% Asian, and 2% unknown, with 39% receiving a Pell Grant and 12.76% who are formally registered with the office of disability services.
Remember, though, this metric is not just whether there is a diversity of individuals present, but whether or not there is significant interaction between the groups of people that are present. From what I know of Loyola New Orleans, there is definitely significant interaction happening between groups, and from what I’ve heard of Agnes Scott, the same is true there.
Okay, I’ve had a chance to dig a bit deeper into the learning environment portion.
Here’s the roll-up for those same southeastern states + Pennsylvania that I did above for Student Experience. For ease of reference, I’m reposting the definitions that WSJ used for these categories:
Learning environment (20%):
Learning opportunities (5%): The quality and frequency of learning opportunities at the college, based on our student survey. This includes questions about interactions with faculty, feedback and the overall quality of teaching.
Preparation for career (5%): The quality and frequency of opportunities for students to prepare for their future careers, based on our student survey. This includes questions about networking opportunities, career advice and support, and applied learning.
Learning facilities (5%): Student satisfaction with the college’s learning-related facilities, based on our student survey. This includes questions about library facilities, internet reliability, and classrooms and teaching facilities.
Recommendation score (5%): The extent to which students would recommend their college, based on our student survey. This includes questions about whether students would recommend the college to a friend, whether students would choose the same college again if they could start over, and satisfaction with the value for money their college provides.
| State | # of Schools Included | Learning Opportunities Range | Learning Opportunities Average | Preparation for Career Range | Preparation for Career Average | Learning Facilities Range | Learning Facilities Average | Recommendation Score Range | Recommendation Score Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AL | 8 | 62-80 | 67.4 | 62-84 | 70.1 | 53-88 | 76.3 | 57-88 | 73.5 |
| GA | 20 | 63-80 | 69.7 | 60-82 | 70.6 | 72-87 | 78.4 | 59-90 | 73.9 |
| LA | 10 | 62-76 | 67.5 | 64-83 | 69.6 | 63-86 | 73 | 59-88 | 69.7 |
| MS | 5 | 63-74 | 67.4 | 62-74 | 69.4 | 74-80 | 76.2 | 67-76 | 72 |
| NC | 16 | 65-77 | 70.6 | 64-77 | 71.4 | 71-87 | 79.7 | 61-85 | 74.2 |
| PA | 36 | 63-79 | 80 | 62-78 | 71.1 | 70-90 | 79.6 | 54-82 | 71.2 |
| SC | 7 | 65-78 | 70.9 | 65-77 | 70.4 | 72-88 | 80.6 | 57-81 | 73.1 |
| TN | 16 | 65-80 | 71 | 66-79 | 70.9 | 74-89 | 80.9 | 69-83 | 76.1 |
| VA | 14 | 61-84 | 71.7 | 59-85 | 71.6 | 72-95 | 82.6 | 64-89 | 77.3 |
| WV | 2 | 63-66 | 64.5 | 58-68 | 63 | 67-76 | 71.5 | 72-74 | 73 |
The spread between the different categories were all much closer, with no big outliers:
| Learning Opportunities Average | Preparation for Career Average | Learning Facilities Average | Recommendation Score Average | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spread from Top to Bottom | 15.5 | 8.6 | 11.1 | 7.6 |
For people who want to see some specific schools, here are the data for…
Pennsylvania
| School | Learning Opportunities Score | Preparation for Career | Learning Facilities | Recommendation Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allegheny | 77 | 72 | 81 | 77 |
| Bucknell | 79 | 78 | 90 | 80 |
| Carnegie Mellon | 68 | 69 | 78 | 72 |
| Chatham | 67 | 62 | 70 | 54 |
| Dickinson | 74 | 71 | 85 | 71 |
| Drexel | 66 | 72 | 71 | 64 |
| Duquesne | 68 | 70 | 79 | 71 |
| Elizabethtown | 73 | 71 | 80 | 70 |
| Franklin & Marshall | 71 | 67 | 78 | 60 |
| Gettysburg | 75 | 73 | 83 | 74 |
| Haverford | 73 | 66 | 85 | 74 |
| Indiana U. of PA | 63 | 64 | 77 | 67 |
| Juniata | 74 | 74 | 77 | 76 |
| Kutztown | 71 | 71 | 74 | 67 |
| Lafayette | 73 | 75 | 87 | 80 |
| Lebanon Valley | 71 | 71 | 74 | 67 |
| Lehigh | 73 | 75 | 87 | 80 |
| Lycoming | 69 | 65 | 80 | 57 |
| Messiah | 72 | 73 | 79 | 67 |
| Muhlenberg | 71 | 68 | 78 | 65 |
| Penn State | 69 | 72 | 79 | 74 |
| Pennsylvania College of Technology | 72 | 76 | 77 | 74 |
| Slippery Rock | 71 | 74 | 81 | 78 |
| St. Francis | 74 | 73 | 76 | 67 |
| St. Joseph’s | 68 | 68 | 73 | 65 |
| Susquehanna | 76 | 78 | 81 | 74 |
| Swarthmore | 71 | 66 | 87 | 74 |
| Temple | 65 | 69 | 78 | 69 |
| Thomas Jefferson | 70 | 71 | 74 | 68 |
| U. of Pennsylvania | 70 | 77 | 83 | 79 |
| U. of Pennsylvania | 70 | 77 | 83 | 79 |
| U. of Pittsburgh | 66 | 68 | 74 | 76 |
| U. of Scranton | 75 | 75 | 87 | 82 |
| Ursinus | 72 | 65 | 79 | 63 |
| Villanova | 73 | 78 | 77 | 77 |
| Washington & Jefferson | 71 | 68 | 82 | 66 |
| West Chester | 65 | 67 | 80 | 75 |
And Virginia
| School | Learning Opportunities Score | Preparation for Career | Learning Facilities | Recommendation Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christopher Newport | 69 | 70 | 85 | 73 |
| George Mason | 61 | 59 | 73 | 64 |
| Hampden-Sydney | 82 | 83 | 92 | 88 |
| James Madison | 74 | 76 | 86 | 87 |
| Liberty U. | 73 | 76 | 79 | 81 |
| Old Dominion | 62 | 60 | 72 | 67 |
| Randolph-Macon | 76 | 76 | 82 | 78 |
| U. of Mary Washington | 71 | 67 | 82 | 72 |
| U. of Richmond | 78 | 74 | 93 | 81 |
| U. of Virginia | 68 | 68 | 81 | 80 |
| Virginia Commonwealth | 65 | 66 | 73 | 65 |
| Virginia Tech | 69 | 71 | 81 | 78 |
| Washington & Lee | 84 | 85 | 95 | 89 |
| William & Mary | 72 | 72 | 82 | 79 |
Since WSJ’s definition of Learning Opportunities is best-aligned to what I consider a quality education, I’ll highlight the three highest scoring schools in each of those states for that metric:
Alabama: Samford (80), Jacksonville State (71), Auburn (69)
Georgia: Savannah College of Art & Design (80), Dalton State (76), Morehouse (75)
Louisiana: Louisiana Tech (76), Southeastern Louisiana (72), U. of Louisiana-Monroe (70)
Mississippi: Mississippi College (74), Jackson State (71), U. of Mississippi (65)
North Carolina: Davidson (77), Elon (76), Wake Forest (76)
Pennsylvania: Bucknell (79), Allegheny (77), Susquehanna (76)
South Carolina: Wofford (78), Bob Jones (75), Furman (75)
Tennessee: Sewanee: The U. of the South (80), Lipscomb (77), Rhodes (75-tie), Belmont (75-tie), Trevecca Nazarene (75-tie)
Virginia: Washington & Lee (84), Hampden-Sydney (82), U. of Richmond (78)
West Virginia: West Virginia U. (66), Marshall (63)
Once again, are there are any surprises on here? Scores that you think would be higher or lower than they are? Or are these a confirmation of what you’re familiar with?
“You” didn’t mean YOU in that sense- it’s like the papal “we”. The following sentence in my post said that the schools send out the surveys. The point remains the same. Do they send out the surveys to all of their students? Or to, as it said, a “representative sample“? Or is their definition of a “representative sample” simply the random students that happened to reply to the survey, and whether or not the information they reply is accurate. Any student could claim that they’re making tons of money, but no one‘s going to fact check it.
And because this is College Confidential where lots of people care about the information about the highest ranked schools, here are the data on WSJ’s top 20 overall:
| School | Overall Rank | Learning Opportunities Score | Preparation for Career | Learning Facilities | Recommendation Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stanford | 1 | 68 | 73 | 78 | 83 |
| Babson | 2 | 83 | 88 | 91 | 88 |
| Yale | 3 | 70 | 72 | 83 | 85 |
| Princeton | 4 | 75 | 77 | 89 | 86 |
| Harvard | 5 | 70 | 70 | 82 | 79 |
| Claremont McKenna | 6 | 79 | 83 | 88 | 86 |
| U. of California - Berkeley | 7 | 64 | 67 | 70 | 78 |
| Columbia | 8 | 66 | 68 | 75 | 72 |
| U. of Pennsylvania | 9 | 70 | 77 | 83 | 79 |
| Davidson | 10 | 77 | 76 | 85 | 78 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 11 | 69 | 75 | 85 | 84 |
| Bentley | 12 | 77 | 82 | 89 | 82 |
| U. of California - Davis | 13 | 67 | 68 | 76 | 76 |
| U. of California - Merced | 14 | 61 | 58 | 71 | 64 |
| Harvey Mudd | 15 | 74 | 66 | 87 | 75 |
| Georgia Institute of Tech | 16 | 71 | 74 | 79 | 84 |
| San Jose State | 17 | 61 | 65 | 70 | 71 |
| Cornell | 18 | 66 | 69 | 81 | 74 |
| Loyola Maryland | 19 | 80 | 83 | 91 | 85 |
| U. of Notre Dame | 20 | 77 | 82 | 88 | 85 |
Since in my previous post I indicated that WSJ’s “Learning Opportunities” metric most closely aligns with my definition of good academics, then the top performers from this list would be:
Babson (83)
Loyola Maryland (80)
Claremont McKenna (79)
Davidson (77)
Bentley (77)
U. of Notre Dame (77)
That is not what I was telling you at all.
Darn, I was out. I would have guessed Agnes Scott in a heartbeat for Georgia as you suggested. And someone claiming it is not diverse is wild. The racial and economic diversity dwarfs that of its peers (both LACs and historically women’s colleges). And, as you say, the interaction across identities is reputed to be very high.
You can still have fireworks 
I know - I noted we all think differently.
I was simply noting that’s what I took from it. I know it’s not what you meant.
As for Agnes Scott, I simply noted it’s one gender - so is that “diverse” but it always depends on the criteria being used - no matter the rank. Both Emory and Ga State are quite diverse as well but Emory is a much wealthier crowd - so I thought they were good guesses 
One of the larger issues with USN, and the significant weight the reputation survey is given on a relative basis.
Highest score for learning opportunities and career preparation, of all the schools mentioned . . .
Seems to me a lot of the larger schools are lower on Learning Opportunities. Impact of some larger class sizes. Schools under 2,000 students did well.
All four components of the “learning environment” rating are based on student surveys. The numbers therefore reflect students’ satisfaction with their own school’s learning environment. Nothing wrong with that (it is interesting!), but I am not sure that it is a measurement of “good academics.”
For example, looking at numbers, MIT has a “learning opportunities” rating of 69 on this survey, which seems about average for most institutions in the survey listed. Some other institutions with a learning opportunities rating of 69 include Lycoming College, Penn State, Christopher Newport University, and Virginia Tech.
If I were to interpret this, I might say that students at each of these institutions appear to be equally satisfied by their own school’s learning opportunities. I am not sure that we can infer that academic quality is the same at all of these institutions, or that MIT (for example) offers an education that is about average in academic quality, compared to all other academic institutions that WSJ surveyed.
For schools with the highest ratings on this measure (looking at you, Babson), my interpretation would be that students are extremely satisfied with the learning opportunities at their school. That is great in itself and certainly something to celebrate. Babson students appear to be getting everything that they came to Babson for… while MIT students are perhaps less satisfied with what they are getting.
I wonder if it’s like - to use the analogy of homebuilders - Toll Brothers builds a luxury home and yet doesn’t have the highest satisfaction.
KB Home builds on the low end and has higher satisfaction.
Perhaps expectations at MIT are excessive whereas at Allegheny or Dickinson they’re not as high?